While watching Wimbledon the last week and a half, I have been struck by the occasional loud beep from the Cyclops machine that detects whether a serve has been hit beyond the service line or not. The referee apparently also has a beeping thing that has replaced the net cord judge - so if the ball grazes the net on a service he hears a beep.

While watching Tim Henman play Mark Phillipoussis on Monday, it occured to me that there were a number of "suspect" or challengable calls. In addition, towards the end of the match, various spectators would call out things near the end of points, so that it wasn't obvious whether the line judge had called the ball out or not. So the solution is obvious, replace all of the line judges with cyclops machines.

Now, confusion may reign if they all make the same noise, so each cyclops machine should make a different noise, such as cows mooing, ducks quacking, motorbikes zooming past, church bells and so on.

This should make some of the boring back court games more interesting as well as clarifying those close calls.
-- PeterSilly, Jun 30 2004

Would these qucking, mooing, zooming, ringing machines till be called buzzers?

I have heard the mention of a new system, the Hawkeye; the height of Wimbledon technology. This system creates 3D images of the ball in relation to lines, and seems like a much better solution. Assuming a feed is given to the umpire/judge.
-- silverstormer, Jun 30 2004


Hmmm, half the time they have to turn the stupid cyclops machine off anyway, so a whole court of them? No way.

Better would be to man-handle out any member of the crowd who shouted their own misleading line calls. In fact, walk them out via the centre of the court to shame them.
-- iivix, Jun 30 2004


also cyclops is only used on the service line as there is unlikely to be anyone standing near it (although in doubles this sometimes isn't the case). if you had cyclops on the base line for instance the machine couldn't tell the ball from anything else (i.e the players feet) which might break the 'beam.'

strange thing about cyclops is that unlike a human judge, the calls it gets wrong are the easiest, because they pass beyond the range of the 'beam.' And indeed in the Henman Philapoossoossosoosis (sp.) game there was a service call against Phil. that was a good 6-8 inches out. pesky Henman grrr.
-- etherman, Jun 30 2004


I've often thought that there hasn't been enough quacking at Wimbers in recent years, Mr S. +
-- Sanna, Jun 30 2004



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