Azarenka fumes at 'useless' umpires and demands change after French Open exit
Former World No.1 Victoria Azarenka has furiously claimed that "useless" umpires should be replaced by technology during a furious outburst after crashing out of the French Open in the first round.
Azarenka lost 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 to world no.42 Bianca Andreescu on Tuesday, with her outrage sparked during the defeat as she disputed a line call. The French Open is the only Grand Slam of the four tennis showpiece events which does not use HawkEye technology to resolve disputed line calls, with the technology having been a welcome addition since its introduction at Wimbledon in 2007.
During the first set of her defeat, Azarenka disputed the call made by the umpire, who stepped down from the chair to judge whether a ball had landed in or not based on marks on the clay.
"You make marks with your finger," the Belarusian was heard to say. "We need electronic line-calling because you guys are useless here! You're useless here."
Azarenka went on to win the first set, but was beaten after losing the following two sets of the match, with a first round exit a disappointing outcome for the 18th seed. She had reached her first Grand Slam semi-final since 2020 at the Australian Open earlier this year and had been rising through the rankings following a disappointing run in the past couple of years.
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Technology has been adopted across the sporting world increasingly in the 21st century, with the avoidance of controversy the main goal of such developments. In sports such as tennis and cricket, technology can provide assistance to aid objective decisions such as a ball being in or out, much like goal-line technology in football.
Azarenka spoke on the clay with the umpire ((Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP) (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images))However, with the French Open refusing to adopt such technology, there has been controversy, with players expressing their dissatisfaction at the current process of the umpire walking onto court to check for marks in the clay.
At last month's Italian Open, Sir Andy Murray was involved in a similarly heated discussion with a chair umpire. The event in Rome also does not use HawkEye technology during matches and Murray disputed the call on court, with umpire Mohamed Lahyani to inspect the mark and determine that the ball was in, as per the original call.
However, the ball was later deemed to have been out, with HawkEye determining as such in the wake of the match. However, there have been some arguments about technology going too far, with the Australian Open having adopted fully electronic line calls having abandoned the use of line judges in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was criticised in January of this year by former French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko, who disputed the full adoption of technology to replace human line-judges in the sport, with her assertion being that such technology is not always correct.
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