Tiebreaker Tension At US Open

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Tiebreaker Tension At US Open

By Joel Mallett on Sat, 27/08.2011

Now that Masters 1000s are only best of three sets, the US Open is the only tournament that uses a tiebreaker in the 5th set. This can result in the most tense of situations, perhaps the most famous being Pete Sampras' 9-7 final set tiebreaker win against Alex Corretja in the quarter-finals of the 1996 event. Sampras went on to win the championship that year. This article looks at other big matches decided by a final set tiebreaker as well as the top 40's record in these situations (next page).

Since final set tiebreakers at the US Open started in 1970 there has never been a championship match decided in this manner. There have, however, been two semi-finals and eight quarter-finals that went right down to the wire:

Year**	Winner	Loser	Score
1980 (SF)	McEnroe J.*	Connors J.	6-4 5-7 0-6 6-3 7-6(3)
1980	Kriek J.	Fibak W.	4-6 6-2 3-6 6-1 7-6^
1983	Scanlon B.	Dickson M.	3-6 6-4 4-6 6-3 7-6
1984 (SF)	Lendl I.	Cash P.	3-6 6-3 6-4 6-7 7-6(4)
1992	Edberg S.*	Lendl I.	6-3 6-3 3-6 5-7 7-6(3)
1996	Sampras P.*	Corretja A.	7-6(5) 5-7 5-7 6-4 7-6(7)
1998	Philippoussis M.	Johansson T.	4-6 6-3 6-7(3) 6-3 7-6(10)
1999	Kafelnikov Y.	Krajicek R.	7-6(0) 7-6(4) 3-6 1-6 7-6(5)
2002	Schalken S.	Gonzalez F.	6-7(5) 6-3 6-3 6-7(5) 7-6(2)
2005	Agassi A.	Blake J.	3-6 3-6 6-3 6-3 7-6(6)

**Quarter-final unless stated otherwise
*Eventual winner
^Tiebreaker scores before 1990 largely unavailable

Masters Series and Tennis Masters' Cup finals to be decided by final set tiebreakers are as follows (best of five matches in bold):

Year (event)	Winner	Loser	Score
1990 (Toronto)	Chang M.	Berger J.	4-6 6-3 7-6(2)
1991 (Indian Wells)	Courier J.	Forget G.	4-6 6-3 4-6 6-3 7-6 (4)
1995 (Miami)	Agassi A.	Sampras P.	3-6 6-2 7-6(4)
2000 (Hamburg)	Kuerten G.	Safin M.	6-4 5-7 6-4 5-7 7-6(3)
2000 (Paris)	Safin M.	Philippoussis M.	3-6 7-6(7) 6-4 3-6 7-6(8)
2003 (Cincinnati)	Roddick A.	Fish M.	4-6 7-6(3) 7-6(4)
2005 (Rome)	Nadal R.	Coria G.	6-4 3-6 6-3 4-6 7-6(6)
2005 (Madrid)	Nadal R.	Ljubicic I.	3-6 2-6 6-3 6-4 7-6(3)
2005 (Shanghai^^)	Nalbandian D.	Federer R.	6-7(4) 6-7(11) 6-2 6-1 7-6(3)
2006 (Rome)	Nadal R.	Federer R.	6-7(0) 7-6(5) 6-4 6-2 7-6(5)
2007 (Montreal)	Djokovic N.	Federer R.	7-6(2) 2-6 7-6(2)
2009 (Paris)	Djokovic N.	Monfils G.	6-2 5-7 7-6(3)
2011 (Miami)	Djokovic N.	Nadal R.	4-6 6-3 7-6(4)

^^Tennis Masters' Cup

The best of five matches show Nadal's amazing ability to squeeze out of extremely tight situations in very long matches. In fact, Nadal has a better 5th set tiebreaker record of anyone other active player, however the Spaniard has only an average record in final set tiebreakers overall (see the next page).

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Joel Mallett

I live in Canberra and am studying to become a high school maths teacher. I love tennis so much that I launched my own...

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