Wimbledon star blasts 'scared' umpire and suggests sacking them all in scathing assessment

Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova has revealed the umpire knew she had won a controversial point in her win over Sonay Kartal when the Wimbledon electronic line calling failed. German official Nico Helmwerth ordered the point to replayed at 4-4 in the first set - and Pavlyuchenkova dropped her serve.

The upset world No.50 complained at the changeover: "They stole a game from me. Because she is local, they can say whatever."

The former French Open finalist recovered to win 7-6 6-4. And in her post-match press conference, she said she had spoken to Helmwerth since reaching the quarter-finals here for the second time.

"I think he felt bad a little bit," said Pavlyuchenkova. "Then he probably felt like he should have taken initiative and called it out because he saw it out, he told me. Yeah, so probably maybe he felt something about it.

"I think it's also difficult for him. He probably was scared to take such a big decision. I think they should. That's why they're there for sitting on the chair. That's why we have a chair umpire. Otherwise, I think soon let's just play without them, right, and then we're going to have everything automatic.

"I think we losing a little bit of the charm of actually having human being, ballboys. Like during COVID, we didn't have ballboys. It just becomes a little bit weird and, like, robot sort of orientated.

"Yeah, it's hard. They're very good at giving fines, though, and code violations. This they don't miss because every time any little thing, they are just right there on it. Yeah, I would prefer they looked at the lines and call in the errors, mistakes better."

A Wimbledon spokesman said: "Due to operator error the system was deactivated on the point in question. The chair umpire followed the established process."

But former world No.11 Pavlyuchenkova said: "It's such a big match, big event. I think since we have already automatic line calling and so much invested into this, we should probably look into something else to have better, yeah, decisions on it.

"I think it's good to erase this subject for the future because if anything like that happens in the very important moment of the match, I think we should have a wire system like in football they have or something, so then it's clear for everybody and we can move on right away instead of just guessing. It could sit with me for the rest of the match and then kind of unknown, was it in or out and kind of feeling that it was my game."

Asked how she would have felt if she had lost the match, Pavlyuchenkova smiled: "No, I would just say that I hate Wimbledon and never come back here I would just say, I hate grass and Wimbledon, like usually we always do when we lose.

"I would be very disappointed. But again, as I said, I try to look at it as, yeah, I'm working on my mental toughness lately. Okay, it was a crucial moment, but it's just one game in the first set. So as I said, the match is long. It's like a marathon. You got to play every point.

"Yeah, so maybe if I lost, so be it. Just not my day. I mean, she's also been playing really good. Yeah, but I won, so..."

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