They everyone remembers their first Wimbledon but mine was so far away it's a bit of a blur. It was 1982, the year Jimmy Connors beat John McEnroe, and I had Center Court tickets. But what made this day special for me was the opening week: it was my first Wimbledon as a linesman, and since then I have served as a linesman there in all but two tournaments. So when I heard that on Wednesday the tournament was replacing us with linesmen using electronic phone calls, I was gutted. It hurt even more because I only found out about it when it was announced on the news and my phone started ringing with people asking me how I was feeling.
I played a lot of tennis when I was younger, and when you play in junior tournaments you end up refereeing each other's matches. It was during a tournament at Wembley sponsored by Benson & Hedges where I saw an advertisement for the Professional Tennis Umpires Federation (PTUF) calling for new members and thought I would give it a try. I had about 30 minutes of training at the Queen's Club in west London and was accepted. At that time, PTUF was run by former military personnel and they paid special attention to how you stood, sat and walked on the court. They couldn't stand any slouching.
Until recently, we were only paid to travel to and perform at matches, so the linesmen did our job purely for the love of tennis. You climbed through various local events and were judged by the head judge until you were finally deemed good enough for Wimbledon – sleep. Several colleagues told me this week that they won't bother renewing their licenses because they can no longer pursue refereeing at Wimbledon, so I'm worried that smaller tournaments will soon struggle to find linesmen.
I imagine the All England Club made this decision because players want consistency in computer-made decisions – although a few of them didn't like this Hawk's Eye at all when it came out. But there are so many things that a human linesman can do that a computer simply cannot offer. We certainly keep the traditions of tennis alive – I think we make the court look fully dressed. Viewers can learn a lot about the game by watching discussions between the linesman and the referee. All this will be lost.
I'm not saying we never make mistakes – we are human after all. But we maintain a very high standard. You have to be completely impartial – even when Andy Murray is about to win his first Wimbledon and you want him to succeed, and no one wants to be the one who has to have their match thrown out. (We were lucky enough to have Novak Djokovic hit the ball into the net so we didn't have to.) Or the year Andre Agassi played with Pat Rafter and I was under the royal box on the halfway line. Agassi swore and I had to go and report it to the chairman, which I suddenly realized was a long way to go with the entire crowd watching me.
It makes me sad to think that I will never experience a moment like this again. I will not stand on center court. I wish they had told us this before this year's tournament so we would have had a chance to say goodbye. I will always love tennis, but I don't think I could stand going to Wimbledon as a spectator now. It just wouldn't have the same atmosphere.
As told to Katy Guest
