{"id":84847,"date":"2025-06-09T10:07:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T14:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=84847"},"modified":"2025-06-09T10:07:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T14:07:43","slug":"fifth-set-tiebreak-battle-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/06\/09\/fifth-set-tiebreak-battle-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifth Set Tiebreak: Is it Spoiling the Battle Created On Court?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recently concluded Roland Garros final<\/a> between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz was an all-time classic<\/a>, culminating in a fifth set tiebreak to decide the match. One of the greatest of all time and in official books the second-longest-ever final, which lasted 5 hours and 29 minutes. However, this epic for the ages has spurred a certain debate on the last set super-tiebreak. The Spaniard winning the last set 7-6(10-2) didn’t go down well with many neutral supporters, who demanded a difference of two games to be the deciding factor.<\/p>\n

For years the first three Grand Slams of the year–namely, the Australian Open<\/a>, French Open<\/a>, and Wimbledon<\/a> allowed matches to go on till late until a decisive two-game advantage was acquired in the final set. Only the US Open would have a fifth set 6-6 tiebreaker. Fans would enjoy that as that rule gave them moments to cherish forever. It almost became a heavyweight championship clash as players could come back from 0-30 (or more) down and throw repeated punches to save their service game.<\/p>\n

The Wimbledon 12-12 Rule<\/h2>\n

The first rule change came in 2019 at Wimbledon, where the new rule limited a match until 12-12 in the fifth set, and then a tiebreak had to be played. This was due to a Kevin Anderson-John Isner semifinal<\/a> at the same venue in 2018 which was decided 26-24 in the fifth. That match delayed the much anticipated Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic semifinal, which too went on very late and had to be pushed to the next day as it finished 10-8 in the fifth. Ironically, the first time the 12-12 rule came into play was the 2019 epic final between Roger Federer and Djokovic<\/a> where both went neck to neck before the tie breaker split the two and the Serb won the championship.<\/p>\n

2022 Brings in the Super Tiebreak rule<\/h2>\n

Recognizing the scheduling problems if matches went on for so long, the Grand Slam board in 2022 announced that there will be a fifth-set tiebreak in all the Grand Slams, however it will be a 10-point knockout. Fans voiced their opinion back then and continue to do so. They believe anyone who runs away with a 3-0 or 4-0 lead in the tie break more often than not would win it as he gets to serve rather regularly. Whereas in a two-game rule players can fight back from 0-40–notably Alcaraz did that in the 4th set Sunday–as he doesn’t have to pass on the serve mid game to his opponent.<\/p>\n

In a match where one almost believes that none of the players can lose, a tiebreak does spoil the fun. Will the Grand Slam boards sit and give us another new rule? Fans would desperately wait for it.<\/p>\n

Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-Imagn Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recently concluded Roland Garros final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz was an all-time classic, culminating in a fifth set tiebreak to decide the match. One of the greatest of all time and in official books the second-longest-ever final, which lasted 5 hours and 29 minutes. However, this epic for the ages has spurred […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5563,"featured_media":84315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,2,9,15913],"tags":[42933,42140,412,1115,22,135,114],"class_list":["post-84847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-french-open","category-atp","category-featured","category-news","category-opinion","tag-2025-french-open","tag-carlos-alcaraz-vs-jannik-sinner","tag-john-isner","tag-kevin-anderson","tag-novak-djokovic","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-roger-federer"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5563"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84861,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84847\/revisions\/84861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}