A French Open officiating crash-out that said everything about line judges and ELC on clay
The Athletic has live coverage of Day 2 of the 2026 French Open.PARIS — Eyes bulging. Mouth agape. On Court Simonne-Mathieu, the bucolic French Open tennis court flanked by greenhouses, Pierre-Hugues Herbert was in the twilight zone.“Look me in the eyes,” he implored the chair umpire, who Herbert believed had just cost him a crucial point during his first-round match against Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego.“You are going to see it, it’s going to be out, and you are really … If you don’t say sorry after that one, I will never speak to you again,” the French qualifier said.The dispute was the same as it ever was at the French Open, the only Grand Slam that still uses line judges, and the traces that shots leave when they bounce on the red clay, to decide whether those shots have bounced in, or out.Holding a break point on Herbert’s serve and the chance to move 2-0 up in the deciding fifth set, Sonego hit a shot that landed close to the sideline.Herbert went to look at the mark. He circled one, but then paused, moved forward a meter or two, and circled another.He was unsure, and more sure than he had ever been, at the same time.So was the chair umpire.“It’s on the line. You had the wrong mark anyway,” he told the disbelieving Herbert, who stomped and gawped around the court like a child who had been told Santa did not exist.His devastation was writ large all over his face, but the the situation was also bigger than him. The French Open’s decision to eschew electronic line calling, which is in use on clay across the ATP and WTA Tours, has plunged players into a practical and philosophical quandary. It sends their heads swiveling back and forth faster than a passing shot whizzes past them at the net.For years, players used the imprints left on clay courts by ball marks to understand their matches. The marks told them what was in and what was out, mapping the contours of their fortunes. They called chair umpires down to inspect marks, carved their rackets through the dirt to inspect them, and argued over what they meant — and whether they were the right ones.Then, in 2025, the men’s and later the women’s tour embraced electronic line calling on clay. In educational videos and player bulletins, the tours asked players not to believe their eyes.ELC arrived on clay later than grass and hard courts because it is a mutable surface. The fine layer of crushed brick behaves differently in sun than in damp, and clumps and collects in different parts of the court.A shot hit with the same speed and trajectory, that lands in the same spot, will leave a different mark on one clay court than another, or even on the same one, at a different time or on a different day.This change in knowledge system has been challenging for players and fans alike, because ELC and ball marks are parallel methods of understanding a tennis match.When ELC is in use, players will use ball marks as evidence of its being faulty; when ball marks are in use, broadcasters show ELC graphics as replays which contradict them. Both systems are fallible — ELC has a 3-milimeter margin of error, and as Herbert demonstrated, players and umpires don’t always choose the right marks. More fundamentally, the two systems do not speak to each other, despite existing side-by-side for players and fans to see.Just as umpires do not check ball marks when ELC is in use, because they can tell a false story of how a ball bounced, broadcasters ought not to show ELC replays of calls when line judges and chair umpires are ruling on them.When those players and fans are asked to accept one way of seeing which can be complex, only to switch back to another one for the biggest clay-court tournament of the year, the situation gets even worse.Herbert, who could not come back against Sonego and lost 7-6(3), 5-7, 6-2, 1-6, 6-4, was devastated by what he felt was an injustice. He will not be the last player this tournament to lose their head on red clay, and find it again on the red of Mars.
Most Popular
