Optimal challenges in tennis

Abstract

The use of technology in sport to assist umpires has been gradually introduced into several sports. This has now been extended to allow players to call upon technology to arbitrate when they disagree with the umpire's decision. Both tennis and cricket now allow the players to challenge a doubtful decision, which is reversed if the evidence shows it to be incorrect. However, the number of challenges is limited, and players must balance any possible immediate gain with the loss of a future right to challenge. With similar challenge rules expected to be introduced in other sports, this situation has been a motivation to consider challenges more widely. We use Dynamic Programming to investigate the optimal challenge strategy and obtain some general rules. In a traditional set of tennis, players should be more aggressive in challenging in the latter stages of the games and sets, and when their opponent is ahead. Optimal challenge strategy can increase a player's chance of winning an otherwise even five-set match to 59%.

Scientific approaches to technological officiating aids in game sports

“…The hawk eye technology in tennis, which is used for the verification of controversial line calls, was investigated by seven of these studies (Abramitzky, Einav, Kolkowitz, & Mill, 2012;Anbarci, Lee, & Ulker, 2014;Carboch, Vejvodova, & Suss, 2016;Clarke & Norman, 2012;Cross, 2014;Mather, 2008;Nadimpalli & Hasenbein, 2013). The remaining two studies focused on the Decision Review System, covering various decisions in Cricket (Borooah, 2016), and the goal line technology in football (Kolbinger, Linke, Link, & Lames, 2015).…”

“…According to the model of Clarke and Norman (2012), an optimal challenge strategy would increase the player's probability to win an even set by 5 %, and an even best-of-three match by 8 % (9 % for best-of-five). Therefore, with the question about the amount of authority granted to the technological officiating aids.…”

Video kills the sentiment—Exploring fans’ reception of the video assistant referee in the English premier league using Twitter data

“…The authors pointed out that the introduction of TOA needs to be treated as interventions in a social setting and therefore, the investigation of stakeholders' opinions has to play a crucial role in the evaluation process. However, so far, research in this area almost exclusively focused on the influence of such aids on on-field events [9][10][11], with few exceptions. Winand and Fergusson could show in their study about the goal line technology in football that even if a TOA works smoothly, fans and spectators still express some aversion [12].…”