Wimbledon to use HawkEye technology

WIMBLEDON - The traditional bleep of Wimbledon's Cyclops line-calling system will be silenced on the show courts this year as the All England Club adopts HawkEye technology for the first time.

The high-speed multi-camera technology which tracks the trajectory of a moving ball was first used at a grand slam in 2005 at Flushing Meadow and has also been successfully launched at the

Australian Open.

At those tournaments players can challenge two line calls per set. An instant replay is shown on large screens, allowing both the players and the spectators to watch whether the ball was in or out.

Wimbledon is played on lush grass where fast, skidding serves, particularly in the men's game, can dominate.

"We can confirm the introduction of HawkEye," Ian Ritchie, the chief executive of the All England Club told reporters on Tuesday. "We are going to have some final testing on grass courts in May to make sure we've got it absolutely right.

"We will use it on Centre and Number One court and we have put in place two large screens on both courts.

"We will not use Cyclops on those two courts because we feel to have conflicting technologies in use at the same time would be inappropriate. We will re-deploy Cyclops on other courts."

Ritchie said they were still to decide how many challenges players would be allowed at the two-week championships which begin on June 25, saying they could get more than they do elsewhere.

"There are slightly different circumstances on a grass court and there are things we are discussing before we decide the protocol we are going to adopt.