{"id":1113,"date":"2023-05-17T22:16:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T12:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/?p=1113"},"modified":"2023-08-20T15:05:34","modified_gmt":"2023-08-20T05:05:34","slug":"how-to-cheat-at-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2023\/05\/how-to-cheat-at-tennis\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Cheat At Tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/newcatallaxy.blog\/2023\/01\/30\/how-to-cheat-at-tennis\/\">First published at NewCatallaxy blog on 30 January, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The term \u201cline ball\u201d is sometimes used to indicate an argument that could go either way. In tennis, though, any part of a ball that does hit any part of the line, is \u201cin.\u201d At the highest level of tennis, players flirt with the lines all the time, and there are many \u201cline balls,\u201d or, as they now seem to be called, close calls. The latter I discovered when watching broadcasts of the Australian Open matches. I also discovered, to my great surprise, that there were no longer any linesmen, or even any lineswomen. The Hawk-Eye system is automatically making the calls. And if anyone has questions about the call, there is an instant replay of the bounce of the ball, and super closeups of the impact mark of the ball on the court. Isn\u2019t technology wonderful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking for information about Hawk-Eye turns up these sources, among surprisingly few others:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ot3GGJ3tWbw?feature=oembed&#038;version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-AU&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/az12C_r_n2Y?feature=oembed&#038;version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-AU&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>and the wiki entry,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hawk-Eye\">Hawk-Eye<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>The replay in \u201cinstant replay,\u201d is not, strictly speaking, a \u201creplay.\u201d&nbsp; It\u2019s actually a \u201cpreplay.\u201d There are 10 (in some reports 12) cameras in the Hawk-Eye system. None of them are anywhere near the lines. The cameras are arrayed around the court in high positions looking down on the play. They record at up to 340 frames per second, and feed that information to the associated computers. [<em>What they are looking at is the ball strike and the subsequent trajectory of the ball. On that basis, the entire trajectory of the ball, including the bounce, is predicted. The ball could, in fact, be called \u201cout\u201d before it crosses the net.<\/em>] As was pointed out in comments, the previous sentence is, as far as can be determined from inadequate documentation, incorrect. It is only the ball tracking on the approach to the bounce that is taken into account. [See comment by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newcatallaxy.blog\/2023\/01\/30\/how-to-cheat-at-tennis\/comment-page-1\/#comment-446190\">Sancho Panzer<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That explains why Hawk-Eye never shows any actual footage of the ball in the vicinity of the line. It\u2019s a simulation. This will be obvious to cricket lovers. Hawk-Eye for tennis is a development of the original product for cricket. Those balls do not go through the batman\u2019s leg and on to, or past, the wicket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For something upon which so much rests, there is a paucity of public information about the system. The software is proprietary, and not even the mathematical modelling has been revealed. Not many questions about calibration seem to have been answered, and things like the number of cameras differ in different reports. In an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/culture\/sport\/2013\/12\/cricket-tennis-and-now-football-use-hawk-eye-how-accurate-it\">article in New Statesman<\/a>&nbsp;from 2015, Harry Collins discussed the accuracy of the system, and the secrecy surrounding it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>So we telephoned the firm to talk about [accuracy] and we hit a wall. As sociologists of science we had spent decades chatting with scientists about this kind of thing but suddenly we were told this information was private and lawyers were on call.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Hawk-Eye had been creeping in through the outside courts for a few years, but in 2021 Covid-19 was the rationale for its full-scale introduction across all matches in both the Australian and US Opens. Think how many Covid deaths were prevented by getting rid of all those linesmen around the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s suppose that there is a lot of money to be won or lost in betting on the results of major tennis matches. Now imagine that some disreputable but technically adept persons manage to gain access to the software of the system. These nefarious people introduce into the system a bias factor that can be invoked from the control system, or better yet, remotely. The bias is only applied to very close calls to reverse them, with the direction of the reversal depending, of course, on the player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who would notice? Players are being conditioned to mistrust their own perceptions and go with the Hawk-Eye call. For example, at the Aussie Open in 2021, Dominic Thiem said, \u201cIf the electronic call is out, the ball is out, so there\u2019s no room for mistakes. I like it.\u201d Spectators, live and remote, are shown the \u201cdefinitive\u201d animation almost immediately. A major match between the world\u2019s top players will often come down to matters of millimetres, and those are the very players who are aiming close to the lines more often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the videos referred to above mentions International Tennis Federation testing of the system in 2006. \u201cResults showed the system to have a mean error of only 2.6mm when compared to a high-speed camera located on the playing surface.\u201d So why not just use the high-speed camera? A competitor, Foxtenn, has done just that. Their high-speed cameras watch the lines, and their replays feature not just the simulation of point of impact, but the actual footage of the ball. But the imagery is coming from a computer, so anything is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s the general problem. The world is presented to us as digital information mediated by computers, and all the virtue can be hacked out of the virtual. Once you accept that you must take on faith the video imagery that you see, just as you must the digital photo images, destination Dystopia is much closer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First published at NewCatallaxy blog on 30 January, 2023 The term \u201cline ball\u201d is sometimes used to indicate an argument that could go either way. In tennis, though, any part of a ball that does hit any part of the line, is \u201cin.\u201d At the highest level of tennis, players flirt with the lines all &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2023\/05\/how-to-cheat-at-tennis\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How To Cheat At Tennis&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,27,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-catallaxy","category-observations","category-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-hX","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":92,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2008\/04\/winter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":0},"title":"Winter&#8230;","author":"pbw","date":"Tue 1st Apr '08","format":false,"excerpt":"Winter is coming. The sky this morning is a perfectly clear blue. A light breeze carries the chill, and a high pressure system sits over most of the continent. Across from the station where I wait, fuming slowly at the mess that's been made of the timetables, one of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Observations&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/observations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1206,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2024\/01\/gaza-postmodern\/","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":1},"title":"Gaza Postmodern","author":"Me","date":"Wed 31st Jan '24","format":false,"excerpt":"First published on NewCatallaxy.blog on 31st January, 2024 One of the first declarations of intent was reported from an unnamed official. The unnamed defense official told Israel\u2019s Channel 13 that the Palestinian territory, home to more than 2 million residents, would be reduced to rubble. \u201cGaza will eventually turn into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;All&quot;","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/all\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2013\/05\/ant-process-elements-in-a-list\/","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":2},"title":"Ant: process elements in a list","author":"pbw","date":"Sun 19th May '13","format":false,"excerpt":"I was looking for a way to process a list of items in an ant build file, similar to what you would do in Java with a construct like: for ( Element element : elements ) { \/\/ do stuff with element } The approach of XSLT, using recursive calls\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Code&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Code","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":34,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2013\/11\/setting-environment-variables-in-os-x-yosemite-and-mavericks\/","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":3},"title":"Setting environment variables in  MacOS Big Sur","author":"pbw","date":"Thu 7th Nov '13","format":false,"excerpt":"This method uses launchctl to manage environment variables for programs invoked directly from Finder. \u00a0See the launchctl man page, especially the section LEGACY SUBCOMMANDS. \u00a0It's not entirely accurate, but that's not unusual. \u00a0The critical subcommands are getenv, setenv, and unsetenv. The man page indicates that the export subcommand is available;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Code&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Code","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2012\/01\/bultmann-the-problem-2-obsolete-mythology\/","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":4},"title":"Bultmann: The Problem 2. Obsolete Mythology","author":"pbw","date":"Wed 25th Jan '12","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a follow-on from my\u00a0previous post. It looks at the subsection that follows from the summary view of the NT as mythology. I urge you to read this subsection in its entirety in\u00a0Kerygma and Myth. I will summarise it here, but it is such an unreasonable and unreasoning series\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Belief &amp; knowledge&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Belief &amp; knowledge","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2013\/05\/bash-functions-for-path-manipulation\/","url_meta":{"origin":1113,"position":5},"title":"Bash functions for path manipulation","author":"pbw","date":"Sun 19th May '13","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a set of path manipulation functions that I first wrote in 2000, and have tinkered with on and off since then. The functions fall into three categories: Path stripping Path building Path listing Path stripping functions rem_path Removes the individual path argument(s) from PATH. \u00a0Implemented as rem_vpath PATH\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Code&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Code","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1178,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}