wearing tennis shorts made of stripes
did anyone else watch serena/capriati last night? i only caught the last ten minutes, since we went to meet kriston, matt and susan last night for half-priced belgian beer at bohemian cavern. but man, that was one bad call that i saw in a point in the last game, and apparently there were several more like it.
Capriati played superbly, without a doubt, but what always will be remembered is the miscue by chair umpire Mariana Alves of Portugal. She awarded the point to Capriati after Williams hit a backhand that landed in — and was ruled good by the line judge."I don't need to see the replay. I know my shots. Not only was it in, it wasn't even near the line," said Williams, who couldn't defend her 2002 Open title because of left knee surgery that forced her to miss eight months. "But I'm not making excuses. I didn't lose because of that. I probably should have closed her out in the second set."
It was eerily reminiscent of Wimbledon, where Venus Williams (news - web sites) lost in the second round after Karolina Sprem was mistakenly awarded an extra point in the final-set tiebreaker. Venus didn't argue at all, saying later she was confused; chair umpire Ted Watts was kicked out of the tournament.
Alves won't officiate another match during the Open, said tournament referee Brian Earley, who acknowledged the overrule by Alves was wrong.
"I'd prefer she not umpire at my court anymore," Serena Williams said. "She's obviously anti-Serena."
what was really amazing was the computer recreations the channel was showing of the ball bouncing. apparently it could recreate exactly how the ball went and where it landed. i'd never seen that before. how do they do this?? tommy suggested that perhaps there is some chip implanted inside the ball? but i found that doubtful - would they really implant chips in every ball used in major matches? anyway, it was kind of amazing. there must be some crazy new cameras working the court.
i hadn't seen a tennis match in a while, and it definitely made me want to play again. are there any good courts in d.c.? i almost yearned for the days of high school tennis team, where we didn't have line judges and i could make my own dirty calls.
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I donno, I still think they might do the chip setup. It'd probably be easier and cheaper, actually, as they'd have to very precisely position several cameras and have some pretty fancy image processing software to figure out the position of the ball based on the captured images. And that'd be a huge pain to drag from stadium to stadium.
By way of comparison they'd just have to put three relatively dumb transponders in fixed positions on the court -- say, one on the corner of each baseline (or set a standard distance back from it) and the third on top of the post holding the net -- and then run some relatively simple triangulation algorithms to get a very accurate result. In this case they'd have to have a tiny transmitter in the ball, it's true, but the NHL already developed the technology to do this a few years ago when they did the much-maligned "glowing puck" effect. Of course, it's probably easier to put a battery and transmitter inside a hockey puck and have it behave like a normal puck than it is to do the same to a tennis ball, but I bet somebody has figured it out.
finally, let me add: huah!
i love google! i think typing in "tennis camera replay" basically answers the question:
Whether politely or profanely, the stars at this year's Nasdaq-100 Open will dispute line calls, just as tennis players have done since the days of wooden rackets and all-white attire.
But now, thanks to instant computer image processing, television viewers can see exactly where a 150 mph Andy Roddick serve landed, give or take a few millimeters.
Also, Roddick, Andre Agassi and the rest of the field are using rackets containing high-tech materials such as Kevlar, graphite and liquid atomic alloys. And when Roddick plays Davis Cup in Delray Beach next month, he'll be whacking a ball whose core will be coated with a special synthetic rubber that doubles its durability.
From computerized TV graphics to vibration-reducing alloys in rackets and nanocomposite ball coatings, advances in technology are changing how tennis is played and watched at every level.
Technology might even change the way tennis is umpired. British inventor Paul Hawkins, a 29-year-old who holds a doctorate in artificial intelligence, has developed a tracking system that uses five on-court cameras to follow the flight path of the ball and feed data to a computer, which produces an image of where the ball landed.
The device, called Hawk-Eye by Hawkins but ShotSpot on ESPN tennis telecasts, has not yet been used in official tournaments to correct line calls.
But Georgina Clark, the Women's Tennis Association's vice president of European operations and a member of the International Tennis Federation's Technical Commission, said she thinks some kind of technology to review line calls will be used by umpires "in the coming year, in some form." The federation would have to approve any line-calling technology before it is used in major tournaments.
Tennis, often seen as a stuffy, tradition-bound game, would be following the footsteps of the National Football League, which allows limited use of TV instant replay to review referee decisions. The National Basketball Association uses replay only for plays at the end of a quarter or overtime. Major League Baseball does not use replay technology.
Hawkins claims that Hawk-Eye's margin of error is three millimeters, or one-eighth of an inch. Before it can be used by umpires, he says a few improvements must be made: The computer image must be able to be displayed quickly every time a player or umpire requests it, and Hawkins must resolve camera difficulties in tracking the ball when one side of the court is in sunlight, the other in shade.
curses! foiled!
well, that's an impressive technical achievement, then. But I still think the radio triangulation system would be simpler if you could get a transmitter into a ball that would still behave normally.
Belgian beer...mmmm.
Catherine, I have a virgin tennis racket just waiting for someone to teach me how to use it, and public courts up the street. You name the day.
okay! perhaps this weekend? we can do drunken tennis. that's actually the best way to learn, i swear. helps with hand-eye coordination.
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