50 Years of Influence, US Open: Paul Hawkins

WATCH—Unstrung - Hawk-Eye on Clay:

In the five decades since the first US Open, these are the players, innovators and newsmakers whose contributions have helped make it one of our nation’s essential sporting events

If you’re looking for the least likely person to end up on this list, Hawkins is a pretty good choice. For one, he’s a British scientist with a Ph.D in artificial intelligence. For another, he’s a cricket player. Put those things together, though, and you have the genesis of the most significant technological development in tennis history: the Hawk-Eye replay system.

Line calls had always been a tedious source of friction in tennis. As ugly and time-consuming as the fights were, though, there was no way around them. Who could tell, to the millimeter, where a ball had landed

Enter Hawk-Eye. Deploying six high-speed cameras and coordinating their data with a computer, the system could determine where a ball landed with 99.99 percent accuracy. Initially used during cricket matches, it was quickly taken up by tennis telecasters.

Hawk-Eye took its final step, from the TV booth to the court, after the 2004 US Open. That year, a series of bizarre calls went against Serena Williams in her quarterfinal with Jennifer Capriati. While TV viewers could see where the shots had landed, Williams had no way to challenge the rulings. Twelve months later, the US Open became the first Slam to install Hawk-Eye’s cameras. While the system has a margin of error of 3.6 millimeters, that has been close enough for most pros. Line-call arguments have largely disappeared; with Hawk-Eye, players and fans can get on with the game.