As someone who has been involved in the crunch of a number of similar incidents, I cringe when things like this happen. I have no doubt the officials involved made the best call they could with what they had in front of them. I would love to know how we 'fix' these situations but there is no simple, or single answer. As @bishop8950 said, video from this perspective is not allowed to be used to make a judging call.
Now.. What I am about to say is in NO WAY advocating for a reversal in the trend in making the sport safer for skiers. I like many of you have been injured by hitting balls and anything that helps prevent people being hurt should be encouraged. However, in my opinion a contributing factor (NOT THE ONLY ONE) to questionable judging calls like this occurring, is a result of the improved safety in turn balls - partially water filled, bubble buoys, low air pressure etc.
In times past centre punching a turn ball like the example above would have likely spat you out the front as the ball would be much harder to deform and displace. It was probably also larger and sat higher in the water. Hitting a ball like this would cause a much clearer displacement of the ski, disruption of the spray, cause the skier to fall etc etc. Now with most balls you can safely hit them all day without consequence. Therefore the ability for a judge to determine whether or not a buoy was correctly skied around is more difficult than it has ever been. It has significantly reduced the margin of error to just a few inches which needs to be determined in less than .01 of a second, without as many telltale signs to make the right call live from the boat. Additionally, if shore judges are in the middle of the course they may be 150-200m away from 1 ball for example. Using the recommended 20cm diameter minimum buoy there is a 10cm margin to determine the difference between a ball being rounded, and a ball being ridden over and centre hit. Not to mention a ball that will probably deform and sink under water easily. This leaves the judges having to determining a 10cm difference from quite a distance away.
Another factor is the video review and video from the boat. The skier is the only constant in the moving video frame. The ball comes in and out of frame while the skier is the primary focus point. This means the buoy is part of the background and suffers from interlace issues as it rapidly moves through the frame. Someone stationary on the bank with a camera, looking at a stationary turn ball will always have greater clarity than a boat camera to determine displacement or ski position in relation to the buoy.