British Wimbledon doubles star refuses to play after heated umpire argument over Hawk-Eye

British world No 1 doubles star Joe Salisbury and his partner Rajeev Ram were embroiled in a heated argument with umpire Fergus Murphy when they disagreed with a call from the Hawk-Eye system during their Wimbledon doubles quarter-final. The top-seeded duo had break point against Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin but were unable to convert it following the Hawk-Eye challenge and called the supervisor to court, refusing to play.

Salisbury and Ram were leading 6-3 and had a break point at 5-5 in the second set to give themselves the chance to serve for a two-set lead. A volley from Roger-Vasselin was called long to gift the world No 1 duo the game and they sat down for the changeover as game was called, but the Frenchman challenged his shot and was successful with Hawk-Eye showing the ball in.

The British-American duo immediately argued the call with umpire Fergus Murphy and refused to play unless the system was turned off, with even the chair umpire claiming he saw the ball out. "No way man. That's ridiculous. We're turning the machine off," Ram said, while Salisbury claimed he wasn't "starting again" until Hawk-Eye was disabled for the rest of the match.

"I'm not playing, there's two calls there. There's no way. We're not at a Futures here man," Ram stressed, while the Brit added: "The whole point of machine is to get the calls right, that was this far out. The machine is obviously wrong, turn it off. There's no chance that was in."

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And the umpire admitted: "I saw it out aswell, the review official checked it, the system is fine, they have all the information. We take the call. I know you disagree with it but that's the way we do it." Both