Pauline Eyre still remembers the “extraordinary feeling” of making her first appearance at Wimbledon aged 21, taking in the noise and the crowds as she marched onto the pristine grass courts, neat and pillowy under her feet.

Eyre, however, had no intentions of hitting a serve or swiping at a forehand, nor dreamed of lifting a trophy in two weeks’ time. She even calls herself “a pretty bad junior player” who regularly lost in the first round of local tournaments.

But under the looming shadow of Centre Court, she had reached the pinnacle of her vocation as a line judge. That moment, Eyre tells CNN Sports, was “a great feeling of pride … going out as that team of people so visibly different.”

Line judges have long been an iconic and instantly-recognizable facet of Wimbledon, decked out in Ralph Lauren uniforms and often considered the sporting world’s best-dressed officials.

But as of this year, that tradition has come to an end. Organizers announced in October that an electronic calling system would be introduced at future tournaments, doing away with human line judges.