{"id":412224,"date":"2026-01-14T11:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T11:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412224\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T11:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T11:47:10","slug":"sebastian-ofner-premature-celebration-leads-to-loss-to-nishesh-basavareddy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/412224\/","title":{"rendered":"Sebastian Ofner premature celebration leads to loss to Nishesh Basavareddy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sebastian Ofner was ecstatic. He had just gone up 7-1 in his third-set tiebreaker in Australian Open<\/a> qualifying, raising his arms, celebrating and tapping a finger to his head, believing he had won the match.<\/p>\n

The only problem was, well, he hadn’t won. The third set super tiebreaker goes to 10 points, not seven.<\/p>\n

Just over 10 minutes later, he had lost 13-11 to American Nishesh Basavareddy and was eliminated from qualification. <\/p>\n

READ MORE: Busted Kokkinakis withdraws hours before match<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Final piece of Neale’s puzzle awaits in ‘fairytale’ move<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: ‘Heartbreaking’ realisation after Kyrgios wins exhibition<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Sebastian<\/p>\n

Sebastian Ofner thinks he’s won the match.\u00a0Twitter<\/p>\n

Basavareddy wasn’t subtle in his celebration either, putting his hands to his throat to indicate Ofner had choked, upon victory.<\/p>\n

Despite the choke celebration, the Austrian still shook Basavareddy’s hand before trudging off the court.<\/p>\n

The unbelievable scene quickly blew up on social media.<\/p>\n

Watch the Adelaide International and Australian Open qualifying live and free on 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

American journalist Ben Rothenberg tweeting “Holy crap, he lost. After Ofner’s premature celebration Basavareddy won eight of the next nine points, then hung on to take the tiebreak 13-11. Wildest ride of the Australian Open so far; should make for some viral videos”.<\/p>\n

Barstool Tennis labelled the situation “insanity”.<\/p>\n

Ofner won the first set 6-4, before his opponent hit back to win the second set 4-6.<\/p>\n

\"Basavareddy's<\/p>\n

Basavareddy’s reaction after actually winning. \u00a0Twitter<\/p>\n

Basavareddy ultimately held off two match points in his comeback, along with winning eight of the next nine points after the premature celebration.<\/p>\n

He will now face George Loffhagen of the United Kingdom for a place in the Australian Open main draw.<\/p>\n

For Ofner, this incident is unfortunately not his first instance of choking away a big lead.<\/p>\n

In 2023 at the Generali Open Kitzb\u00fchel in Austria, he led Slovakia’s Alex Molcan 6-4, 5-0 in a best-of-three-sets match.<\/p>\n

He would drop seven straight games to lose the second set, and then lost the third in a (seven-point) tiebreaker.<\/p>\n

The Australian Open features the 10-point super tiebreaker, only in the third of three-set qualifying matches. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sebastian Ofner was ecstatic. He had just gone up 7-1 in his third-set tiebreaker in Australian Open qualifying,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-412224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}