INDIAN WELLS, California – Tennis is entering a new era: one in which the marathon final sets, which ended some of its biggest and longest matches, are no longer an option.
The Grand Slam Board announced on Wednesday that in May, with the French Open, all four major tournaments will put a tiebreaker at 6-6 in crucial sets: the third set in the women’s singles matches and the fifth set in the men’s singles.
The first player to score at least 10 points and 2 points wins the tiebreaker. The move was announced as a one-year trial, but is likely to be permanent if you consider the extensive consultation behind it.
The wind has been blowing in this direction for some time now with concerns about the pace of the game, match lengths, player health and recovery times.
“It’s good that they have that uniform now, but I think what made them unique was also how every fifth sentence was different, so I can see both sides of it,” said John Isner, the American veteran whose first round victory over Nicolas Mahut. from France to Wimbledon in 2010 set a logic defense record by extending to 70-68 in the fifth set.
If the new rules are permanently comprehensive, this mark will remain untouchable forever.
“It was never broken anyway, so those are my thoughts,” Isner said.
It’s hard to argue. The final set of Isner-Mahut stretched over three days, monopolizing court 18 at the All England Club and generating worldwide interest in an otherwise obscure early-round match.
There is a fascination created by two players pushing themselves on their physical and mental boundaries; a particular kind of excitement fostered by a marathon final formation after competitors and spectators had invested so many hours in the result.
“This is just like an absolute battle,” said Taylor Fritz, a 24-year-old American who reached the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open.
Fritz said that ultra-long final sets make it anything but impossible for the winner to advance much further in a tournament. “You’re so ready for your next match if you have one of those,” he said. “But it’s tradition, and I’ll miss seeing these crazy battles.”
Prior to the Open era, there were no tiebreakers in a set at the Grand Slam tournament or in the Davis Cup, the premier men’s team competition. A set has been won by winning at least six games with a margin of at least two. In an extreme example from the first round of Wimbledon in 1969, 41-year-old Pancho Gonzales defeated his American Charlie Pasarell 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9 in one match. which lasted over two days.
The following year, a six-player tiebreaker was introduced at the 1970 US Open for all sets and was gradually adopted by the other Grand Slam tournaments and major team competitions for all sets except the last.
But after more than a century, the Davis Cup opted for a final-set tiebreaker in 2016 and the Australian Open and Wimbledon followed in 2019, but in different ways. The Australian Open opted for the extended first-to-10-point tiebreaker at 6-all and Wimbledon adopted a traditional first-to-seven tiebreaker at 12-all.
The French Open continued to play the fifth set, leaving behind four Grand Slam tournaments using four different methods to solve crucial sets – a discrepancy that confused some players.
In the middle of the fifth set of the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final 2019, Novak Djokovic had to check with the referee when the tiebreaker was played.
The leaders of the Grand Slam tournament clearly wanted a more orderly solution.
“The decision of the Grand Slam Board is based on a strong desire to create more consistency in the rules of the game at the Grand Slams, thereby enhancing the experience for players and fans,” the Board of Directors said in a statement.
Uniformity will at least provide clarity, and the first-to-10 point tiebreaker should allow for more voltage and dynamic changes than the first-to-seven system.
But when the new rules are adopted after the trial, it shrinks the horizon of what constitutes an epic match.
Many matches ranked in the biggest have gone into the tennis equivalent of overtime, which is certainly no coincidence.
Bjorn Borg’s victory over John McEnroe in the 1980 Wimbledon final went 8-6 in the fifth set; Rafael Nadal’s victory over Roger Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final went 9-7 in the fifth; Djokovic’s victory over Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon final went 13-12 in the fifth with a tiebreaker at 12-all.
At the French Open, Monica Seles’ victory over Steffi Graf in the exquisite 1992 final was 10-8 in the third, and Jennifer Capriati’s victory over Kim Clijsters in the 2001 final was 12-10 in the third.
But marathons will not be out of the question in this new, rationalized tennis world. Consider the 2012 Australian Open men’s final, between Djokovic and Nadal, the longest single final in Grand Slam history in terms of time. They played 5 hours 53 minutes and were so consumed when Djokovic ended his victory that both stills were needed in the award ceremony.
But that match, without a doubt one of the greatest in tennis history, would not have been shortened by a tiebreaker under the unified rules announced on Wednesday.
In the fifth, it went 7-5.
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