French Open tennis player uses his Apple iPhone to dispute umpire’s call

“On Monday, during the ongoing French Open tennis match, Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky was upset about a call the referee made about where the ball landed in relation to the boundary,” Joshua Pramis reports for Digital Trends.

“The call resulted in Stakhovsky’s loss and… after unsuccessfully having words with the umpire, according to ESPN, Stakhovsky whipped out his iPhone and snapped a photo of the mark the tennis ball left in the clay. He then took to Twitter to showcase the photo with the message, ‘Well…here what you asked for…,'” Pramis reports. “He plans to take the photo to tournament supervisors to review.”

Pramis reports, “While a decision has yet to be made as of press time, the outcome could have an impact on the future of professional sports. If the call is overturned, we could very well see a trend, where athletes become their own documentarians, using their mobile devices to benefit their personal game.”

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Anna Edwards reports for The Daily Mail, “‘I’m now expecting a fine, actually, so I’m going to go and fight,’ Stakhovsky said. ‘I believe it was a bad call, it was a bad judgment. After all, we are playing on clay, where you should be clearly able to read the mark, and unfortunately, not all of our referees are able to do so.'”

“Stakhovsky decided to gather proof for his case, getting his phone and walking over to where the spot in question was, then leaning over to get a close-up of the red clay,” Edwards reports. “‘It was just spontaneous. It’s never thought through,’ he said. ‘When you see it, you get frustrated, because you saw the ball is nowhere being out and the frustrations comes in.'”

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