01/18/2024 10:36hs.
Elena Rybakina (3°) y Anna Blinkova (57°) They entered tennis history this Thursday by playing the longest tie-break in a women’s match at the start of the Australian Open.
The Kazakh and the Russian split a set apiece in the second round of the first Grand Slam of the year before reaching the decisive round that stretched much longer than imagined. Both gave up three service turns, remained tied at six games per side when it came to defining the story and put on a real show at the end of the match.
The match that went down in tennis history
In dramatic fashion, the two began to break serve and recover it to not let the match go. In unison they were looking for a pass to the third round of the great first event of 2024 and they were hugging tightly to a victory that finally fell to the Russian side after 42! uninterrupted points. The final score was 22-20 and with it, a new milestone was recorded.
The final part of the match lasted more than half an hour and once Blinkova took the last game, the clock for the third and final set showed 1h34m of action. History was left in the hands of the Russian 6-2, 4-6 and 7-6 (20) after 2h48m of intense play. Of the 22 points that Anna won in the tie-break, only 11 were on her serve. The same thing happened to Rybakina, who only got ten with her serve out of the 20 total he achieved.
Blinkova eliminated Rybakina from the Australian Open. (AP)
The milestone that Blinkova and Rybakina overthrew
In July 2023, In a match between Lesia Tsurenko and Ana Bogdan at Wimbledon, 38 points were needed to define history which on that occasion was in the hands of the Ukrainian 20-18. That day, both were exhausted after so much complexity. This time was no exception and the next instance will tell if Blinkova has any left to continue at a steady pace after crossing out one of the candidates for the title.
Tsurenko had won the longest tie-break so far. (AFP)
Four points away from the absolute record
Rybakina and Blinkova were in charge of raising the bar and, hand in hand with high-voltage tennis, they set a precedent that will be difficult to beat over time. They were even very close to surpassing or at least equaling the longest tie-break on the men’s circuit. History shows that in 2022, Reilly Opelka defeated John Isner 24-22 in a tie-break that counted 46 points between them and remains the longest in the entire tennis circuit.
2024-01-18 13:36:21
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