By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
The 2020 World TeamTennis season concluded with one of the rarest circumstances in tennis history – a sudden death point.
It was a simultaneous championship point at 6-6 in decisive super-tiebreaker for both the New York Empire and the Chicago Smash in the mixed-team league title match at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. The winner of the season championship hinged on this final point between Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion, and her Smash partner, Bethanie Mattek-Sands, the 2016 Olympic gold medalist in mixed doubles, playing Coco Vandeweghe, the Australian and U.S. Open semifinalist in 2017, and her Empire partner Nicole Melichar, the 2018 Wimbledon mixed doubles champion.
Sloane Stephens hit her first serve in play on the ad court and Vandeweghe of the Empire ripped a forehand down the line passed Mattek-Sands at net that landed near the baseline. There was no “out” call from the Hawk-Eye Live electronic line-calling system and an electronic review of the line call revealed that the ball just cleared the back part of the line for a winner.
As Tim Palmer, the head of the Treasure Coast Tennis Association in Vero Beach, Florida emailed to me “A match decided in a tiebreaker that went to sudden death, then ended on a caught-the-back-of-the-line return winner. In a word: UNBELIEVABLE!!!”
The point will go down in tennis lore and legend as one of the most exciting tennis matches to ever conclude with a sudden-death point. Many casual observers of tennis may think, “Wait…There aren’t any chances to have a sudden death point in tennis. You have to always win by two points!” However, in the early days of the tie-breaker, and in recent times with experimentations with different scoring systems, there have been circumstances where a simultaneous match point has determined match outcomes. In the early days of the tie-breaker in the early 1970s, a nine-point variety was played, the first to win five points, with 4-4 being a “sudden-death” simultaneous set point. The sudden-death tiebreaker returned in later years with of new scoring formats, including the first-to-seven point “Super Tiebreaker” played to determine tied matches in World TeamTennis.
After the 2020 World TeamTennis finale, I started to immediately think of some of the greatest sudden-death points in tennis history. In no particular order, here is what I came up with as the other great matches determined by a sudden-death point.
- A most recent dramatic sudden-death point circumstance, that also determined a championship, came at the final of the 2019 Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia. Roger Federer and his Team Switzerland teammate Belinda Bencic faced simultaneous match point against the German pair of Alexander Zverev and Angelique Kerber. After Federer beat Zverev and Kerber beat Bencic in singles play, the mixed doubles match determined the champion. The scoring format for the mixed doubles was a “Fast-4” format where sets are played to four games, with no-ad scoring, and a nine-point tie-breaker at 3-3. Federer and Bencic won the first set 4-0 and lost the second 1-4. The two teams reached 3-3 in the decisive set, prompting a decisive nine-point tie-breaker. With both teams at 4-4, a decisive ninth point was played to determine the winner of the match and the championship. Federer served to Zverev and an amazing rally ensued with Federer and Bencic having to hit four volleys each before Zverev netted a backhand on the 18th shot of the rally You can see the highlight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml5tX-LVbrA
- On Saturday, October 3, 1970 featured another sudden-death point that determined the No. 1 ranking in the United States for that year. It was between Cliff Richey and Stan Smith in the semifinals of the Pacific Coast Championships at the Berkeley Tennis Club in California. The two players played a decisive nine-point tiebreaker at 6-6 in the fifth set of their match. The two reached 4-4 in the final-set tiebreaker with the next point determining the winner of the match and the No. 1 ranking Richey describes the match in his inspirational biography “Acing Depression: A Tennis Champion’s Toughest Match” (for sale and download here:. https://www.amazon.com/Acing-Depression-Tennis-Champions-Toughest/dp/0942257669/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Acing+Depression&qid=1596458677&sr=8-1 “So now we had just one more point to play,” Richey wrote. “I missed my first serve. I threw in a little chicken-shit second serve. It was just a hit and a hope. The first order of business was just somehow to get the ball in the court. I came to the net off of that serve. He hit the return of serve. And then he came to the net! So we were both at the net! I dived for a backhand volley. I did a 360-degree turn. I just instinctually went for where I thought the ball was going to be. Stan thought he had passed me on the last shot, but I reached out and hit a winner. I hit a winning forehand volley. He still thinks it bounced off the wood frame of my racquet. I disagree. It certainly doesn’t matter now. . . . And then it was over. I was No. 1. Stan recalls that right after that, I sort of went into a trance for about five minutes after shaking hands. I was in that “zone” people talk about. It was like I kind of flipped out or something. I was beside myself with excitement. I went back over to him and gave him a hug. After four hours, the winning score was 7-6, 6-7, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (5-4).”
- On August 18, 1970, Haroon Rahim of Pakistan won what is called “the closest tennis match ever played” as he defeated Tom Gorman 6-7 (3-5), 7-6 (5-1), 7-6 (5-4) in the second round of the Pennsylvania Grass Court Championships in Haverford, Pa. The tournament was one of the first to use the nine-point “sudden death” tie-break – first to win five points – which was seen as quite controversial at the time. Rahim trailed Gorman 1-4 in the final-set tie-break (four consecutive match points) but rallied to win the last four points – and the match. With both players holding match point at 4-4, Gorman netted a return off of Rahim’s second serve.
