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(AMERICA'S LEADING SCIENCE MAGAZINE)

DECEMBER 1982 • $2

NO FAULT TENNIS CALLS

New technology shows that linesmen, not players, are usually right

by KEVIN McKEAN

At the Vic Braden Tennis College, linesmen squint as cameras record a ball in flight. Inset: the Eye Mark Recorder

T he scene is etched in the minds of tennis fans: John McEnroe, or Jimmy Connors, or Ilie Nastase noisily disputing a line call with the umpire or a linesman. Although most people resent bad manners on the court, they suspect that the players are right. After all, these superb athletes, with their superior reflexes, acute vision, and long years of experience on the courts, must be the best judges of where the ball lands.

But are they? A new study suggests that the usually older, sometimes be

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN ZIMMERMAN

spectacled and out-of-shape umpires are far more accurate than players, and that the maligned linesmen, crouching and squinting from their courtside chairs, are more accurate than the umpires. The implications-for tennis and many other sports-are profound.

These surprising conclusions are being drawn at the Vic Braden Tennis College at a resort called Coto de Caza in Trabuco Canyon, California. There, some 70 miles south of Los Angreles, several dozen tanned men and wonu•n

DISCOVER December 1982