Guillermo Olaso and Evgeny Karlovskiy have set a ten-year-old tiebreak record at the RBC Tennis Championships of Dallas on the Challenger Tour. In the short decision of the first set, the Spaniard won after more than 32 minutes 22:20 against his Russian opponent.
“It felt like we were playing another set – we both used up so much energy,”Olaso told the ATP website after his tiebreak marathon.
The 29-year-old from Bilbao lost the qualifying final in Dallas 7-6 (20), 1-6 and 6-7 (5) against Karlovskiy, who was six years younger.
Olaso will still remember the 42-point tiebreak, however:”When I won the set, I cheered like a match win,”enthused the Spaniard, who destroyed ten set points of his opponent during the short game.
A tie-break of 42 points had already made it into history in 2008. At that time Gary Lugassy won 6-2,7-6 (20) against Igor Zelenay at the Challenger in Sarajevo.
The record for the longest tiebreak of all time is 70 points. Benjamin Balleret (Monaco) defeated his fellow countryman Guillaume Couillard 7:6 (36:34!), 6:1 at an ITF future in the USA. However, there were no referees and line judges in this match in 2013, so the record was not officially recognized.
The longest valid tiebreak in the singles was also recorded on the lowest professional level. Evgeny Tyurnev won a Future in Aktobe (Kazakhstan) in January 2016 against Danilo Petrovic 7-6 (25-23!), 6-3.