Instant Replay Accepted By WTA and ATP Tours

The long nightmare of tennis fans will soon be over: instant replay is coming to professional tennis. It was announced on Monday that starting with the Tier 1 tournament in Miami, the NASDAQ-100 Open, the electronic line calling system named "Hawk-Eye™" will be available at some ATP and WTA Tour events, with its Grand Slam debut at the 2006 US Open.

As the image to the left shows, it is somewhat ironic that ELC (electronic line calling) will make its debut at the US Open, where in 2004 Serena Williams got completed ripped on (at least) two incorrect line calls in favor of Jennifer Capriati at crucial stages of their quarterfinal match.

Apparently the details are that each player will get two chances per set to be wrong on a challenge to a line call by a linesperson. If they are constantly correct they can make as many appeals to ELC as they wish. If the set has a deciding tiebreaker they get one more appeal to ELC. If they do not use all their ELC appeals in one set they can not carry over their unused ELC appeals to the next set.

Bring it on!!