Mike Celizic

Tracy Austin, who burst on the tennis scene as a pint-sized, 14-year-old, pony-tailed prodigy in 1977 and went on to win four major titles in a career cut short by injuries, knows there were times during her career when she wished tennis had instant replay to review line calls.

She’s hardly alone. There aren’t any tennis players alive who haven’t lost a big point in an important match, whether for bragging rights on the muny courts or the U.S. Open, on a ball they were sure was in or had an opponent win one on a ball they were positive was out.

Line calls were what elevated John McEnroe from just another brilliant tennis player to a brilliant tennis player who was also an obnoxious brat. They could launch Jimmy Connors into fits of passion punctuated by vulgar gestures at the offending linesperson. Occasionally, players have forfeited matches in tournaments or just packed their things and stormed home from the local club because of line calls with which they disagreed.

Every time it’s happened, the wounded player has wished that with all the technology available today, there were some way to take another look at calls they are sure were wrong.

“There are obviously calls that come at crucial times in important matches that you think made a difference in the outcome,” says Austin, now a commentator for NBC and contributor to MSNBC.com, of which NBC is a partner. “I was good at moving on and forgetting about bad calls, but there were times after matches, when I’d say to myself, ‘That call didn’t seem right.’”

Austin found herself discussing the issue because, finally, electronic justice has arrived, and she’d been enlisted to help spread the word that the Hawk-Eye instant replay system will be used in a major championship for the first time in August and September at the U.S. Open.

Use of instant replay is the first major rules change in tennis in more than 30 years, when the tiebreaker was introduced to end matches. The U.S. Open has been the most innovative of the major tournaments. It’s the only major that’s been played on all three surfaces used for the game — grass, clay and hard courts. It’s also led the way in giving equal prize money to men and women and employing both male and female linespersons and ball-fetchers. It also helped pioneer Cyclops, the machine that calls the service lines. So it’s no surprise it’s the first to take the next step into the electronic age.

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The decision to implement instant replay was announced a while ago, and the system had a highly successful test run earlier this year at the NASDAQ-100 tournament in Florida. But it’s been pretty much ignored in the mainstream press. So, needing a gimmick on which to hang the fact that tickets for the Open went on sale Monday, the U.S.T.A. ran the live demo of the system in Grand Central Terminal and Austin and fellow retired pro Mary Joe Fernandez helped beat the publicity drums.

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