Hawk-Eye to be used in Dubai tennis championships

ABU DHABI, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The hi-tech Hawk-Eye system will be used in the upcoming Dubai Tennis Championships, which runs from February 19 to March 3, the tournament's official website reported on Wednesday.

The state-of-art line-calling system has been used in television coverage of several major tennis tournaments, including Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, the Davis Cup and the Tennis Masters Cup.

Hawk-Eye will use a number of dedicated cameras around the court to track the ball with great accuracy, with the ability to determine if a ball is in or out to within a couple of millimeters.

Players must challenge immediately if they think a ball is in or out, and once a player challenges, the official review will be provided simultaneously to the television broadcast and in-stadium video boards, allowing the players, chair umpire, on-site fans and television viewers the opportunity to see the live results of a player challenge.

To avoid frivolous challenges, the number of challenges that a player can make was limited in the recent Australian Open to two in each set, with an extra challenge allowed if the set went to a tiebreak. However, if the players challenge was correct, that challenge was not deducted from their allowance.

Hawk-Eye has been welcomed by most of the players, as they can relax in the knowledge that they have not been denied an important point by a bad call from the lines-person or umpire.

"I think positive of it," the report quoted Maria Sharapova, world number one and Dubai Women's Open 2006 runner-up, as saying.

"I think a majority of the players, and the fans, enjoy it. If you don't want to use it, you don't have to use it. It's your choice. But if there's a doubt in your mind and you want to challenge a call, why not? It's there for you."

The 3 million U.S. dollars Dubai Tennis Championships is owned and organized by Dubai Duty Free and comprises a WTA Tier ll tournament played back-to-back with an ATP World Series Gold tournament.

In 2006, the event attracted some of the world's leading players, including Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Maria Sharapova and Justine Henin-Hardenne.

Editor: Liu Dan