Journal of Sports Analytics<\/a>, New York University\u2019s Steven Brams, Wilfrid Laurier University\u2019s Marc Kilgour, and King\u2019s College London\u2019s Mehmet Mars Seven analyzed more than 50,000 Grand Slam singles matches played between 1968 and 2024 and found that such game-set discrepancies occur between 3 and 5 percent of the time.<\/p>\nWhile this represents a small proportion of matches, they can occur at the highest levels of competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For instance, in the 2019 Wimbledon men\u2019s final Novak Djokovic beat Roger Federer in five sets despite Federer winning more games overall (36\u201332), giving Djokovic the champion\u2019s trophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the infrequency of these outcomes, the researchers argue that when the set winner and the game winner differ, both players have a legitimate claim to victory, so the sport should have a way to resolve it.<\/p>\n
The study\u2019s authors say tennis\u2019s governing bodies have an opportunity to consider a change that would make outcomes fairer and reduce the risk of future discrepancies at the highest level. They have dubbed it \u201cThe Grand Tiebreak\u201d.<\/p>\n
The proposed rules would be as follows:<\/p>\n
Matches would still be played under standard Grand Slam rules (best-of-five sets for men, best-of-three for women).
\nOnly if the match winner by sets has won fewer total games than the opponent would the players play a Grand Tiebreak to determine the winner.
\nThe Grand Tiebreak would be played using standard set tiebreak rules, making it familiar to players, officials, and fans.<\/p>\n
Using mathematical modeling, the authors estimate mismatches between the set winner and game winner occur in about 5 percent of men\u2019s best-of-five matches and about 3 percent of women\u2019s best-of-three matches. In practice, the overall rate across Grand Slams is lower, largely because early rounds include many uneven match-ups.<\/p>\n
However, the historical record is not trivial when it comes to numbers of matches affected, the researchers note. Across Grand Slam singles matches in the Open Era, these amount to hundreds of cases in which the match winner won fewer games overall.<\/p>\n
The authors find that this amounts to around a dozen matches per Slam (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open) in which a Grand Tiebreak scenario arises over the course of tournaments. The research also suggests that the issue becomes more relevant as tournaments progress and opponents become closer in ability.<\/p>\n
\u201cTennis has a long and venerable history, so why are we suggesting a rule change now?\u201d they write. \u201cFirst, tennis has not been immune to rule changes; over the last 50 years, one of the most significant was the tiebreak after a set ties at 6\u20136.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis solved a serious problem of extraordinarily long matches, sometimes lasting more than a day,\u201d they continue. \u201cWe think that the 2019 Wimbledon final highlights the problem that the strengths of two players may well be gauged by different and equally valid performance measures. A Grand Tiebreak will force players to try to succeed according to both measures, so its existence is likely to greatly diminish the need for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Under tennis\u2019s rules, the winner of a match is the player who wins the greater number of sets.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-404737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}