{"id":370273,"date":"2026-01-14T23:52:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370273\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T23:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:52:15","slug":"sebastian-ofner-celebrates-early-then-loses-australian-open-qualifier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/370273\/","title":{"rendered":"Sebastian Ofner celebrates early \u2014 then loses Australian Open qualifier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sebastian Ofner, the world No131 from Austria, suffered a humiliating exit from qualifying for the Australian Open after celebrating prematurely in a deciding tie-break before going on to lose the match.<\/p>\n

Ofner, 29, was unaware that tie-breaks in the final set are played to ten points, so when he went 7-1 ahead against Nishesh Basavareddy, the world No239 from the United States, he raised his arms in celebration and began to walk to the net.<\/p>\n

He was informed by the umpire that he still required a further three points, but Basavareddy then staged an extraordinary comeback, winning eight of the next nine points and clinching the tie-break 13-11 to reach the final round of qualifying.<\/p>\n

Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager.<\/a><\/p>\n

Enable cookiesAllow cookies once<\/p>\n

Basavareddy will face George Loffhagen, the 24-year-old British player, for a place in the main draw at the first grand-slam tournament of the season which begins in Melbourne next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew there was still some time, in a super tie-break you always have a chance, so I kept believing,\u201d Basavareddy said. \u201cI saw him tense up a little bit, but the balls were quite old, so every rally was a war and that was my main focus, just to put as many balls in play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Loffhagen, the world No211 from London, was leading 6-3, 3-1 against Yoshihito Nishioka when his Japanese opponent was forced to withdraw through injury.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Basavareddy celebrates his impressive comeback with a choking gesture<\/p>\n

Ten-point tie-breaks were first introduced at the Australian Open<\/a> in 2019 and all four grand-slams adopted the rule in 2022. At the 2023 US Open Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> celebrated prematurely when she reached seven points in her semi-final against Madison Keys, but she then went on to win the tie-break before losing the final to Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sebastian Ofner, the world No131 from Austria, suffered a humiliating exit from qualifying for the Australian Open after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-370273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}