The game of love belongs to the machine

NEW YORK -- Coincidentally, it was Labor Day at the U.S. Open tennis tournament when machines took over. Sports may never be the same.

What next? Laser first-down markers in football? (Probably). Computer readouts with percentage projections like TV poker for baseball managers pondering pitching changes? (Coming soon). Ankle bracelets for all NBA referees (Mandatory).

Tommy Haas and James Blake were at the end of yet another dramatic five-set match in a tournament full of them Monday, when technology took over.

Moment 1: Haas was serving at 6-3, match point, of the decisive tiebreaker. Blake hit a passing shot that was near the baseline and the human put there to make the call signaled that it was in. It was so close that Haas called on the machine, a camera named Hawkeye that tracks shots to within fractions of an inch. Each player gets two challenges to line calls per set, and Haas was using one of his.

Everything stopped. A stadium full of people who had been overdosing on adrenaline from this spectators’ roller coaster went quiet. These challenges have become part of the sport but seldom happen on match point of a three-hour thriller.

High above the stadium, somebody in a little booth pushed a button that told Hawkeye to run the film of the shot, and its precise landing spot, for viewing on the big screens on both ends of Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The screen flashed and the camera re-created the ball zooming toward the baseline. It plunked down and left a mark showing that about one-eighth of an inch of the line had been touched.

Ball in. Call confirmed. Match continued.

Moment 2: Now, Haas was at 6-4 of the tiebreaker, his second match point. He served, the ball sped toward the right side of the service box and the linesman called it in. Ace and match point.

But Blake challenged that the ball was in.

It was a moment that had to stir the inner geek in techies worldwide. Somewhere, Bill Gates was getting goose bumps. Two match points in a row, allowed to be put in the hands of a machine for final arbitration, in the U.S. Open! Ellsworth Vines was spinning in his grave.

The button-pusher pushed, the ball came onto the big screen and headed toward the right sideline of the service box. Hawkeye zoomed in, and there was perhaps one-quarter of an inch, touching the line.

Game, set, match. Haas had won. The human had been right again, but they are afterthoughts now. Everybody waited 20 seconds or so for the real call, then believed.

Haas and Blake shook hands and hugged at the net, the 23,000-plus in the stands in Arthur Ashe Stadium stood and applauded the effort, and nobody stood up and screamed, “We wuz robbed!” The camera had spoken, and all the stockbrokers in the crowd went back to their Blackberrys to check the London exchange.

Acceptance was universal. In the same stadium where that legendary Referees Ranter, John McEnroe, sat in a broadcast booth, not one person even stood up, out of respect to him, and yelled that Hawkeye was “the pits of the world.”

As a matter of fact, during the telecast of this match, one of the commercials played repeatedly was of McEnroe, going to the home of a chair umpire he had berated years ago, telling him “there was a chance that that ball was in,” and the two hugging.

You’re thinking that WE CANNOT BE SERIOUS! But we are.

Haas said that, after Blake challenged his match-point serve, “We kind of just exchanged smiles, because what else can you do. . . ?

Blake, who had seen his chance for his first major title, and with it the $1.4-million prize money, disappear on a huge TV screen above him, said, “I don’t need to go to bed tonight, wondering if that serve really was in or out. I looked up. It’s in.”

In this age of video everything, it no longer even occurs to anybody that the Hawkeye isn’t infallible. If we see it, it must be true. Its harshest critic, Russian Marat Safin, now says he’s fine with it.

Even the linesmen and referees love it. No more angry people in their face. No more McEnroe clones. Just look up at the big screen and shut up.

Sure, there might be a little falloff of entertainment, a little less spice in the show. But isn’t it better to get it right and be a little blasé than letting it be controversial, unpredictable and, well, human?

Isn’t it?

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.