Tennis adopted electronic line calling on clay and created a ball-mark monster

“Can you make it make sense?” Alex Eala asked after her defeat to Iga Świątek at the 2025 Madrid Open.Eala, the 20-year-old emerging talent from the Philippines, was not talking about her three-set loss, but rather a ball mark on the tournament’s red clay courts. Early in the match, Świątek hit a serve that the mark on the clay showed to be out, but no out call came: the electronic line calling (ELC) system determined it to be in.“I mean, the mark is the physical, it’s the physical proof,” Eala said.Advertisement