When was tie break introduced

His semi-final last year also went the distance as Kevin Anderson won in the decider. That match caused chaos for the scheduling, forcing Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal to play until They had to come back on the Saturday lunchtime, playing before the ladies' singles final got underway.

With that, SW19 chiefs decided they needed something to prevent it happening again - but were reluctant to cut the final set to a regular tie-break at so opted for instead.

Matches of this duration were far more common, however, before the creation of the tiebreak, a scoring system initiated in , in part due to a marathon men's single match that occurred at Wimbledon. In the s, former national tennis champion James Van Alen encouraged tennis officials to revise the tennis scoring system, which he felt was outdated.

It limited sets to 21 or 31 points and eliminated the second service. The system was tested in U. Pro Championship tournaments in and , but failed to catch on within the larger tennis world.

Determined to convince people of his scoring system's effectiveness, Van Alen invited all the top players to vie for a generous prize. Another feature of his new system, known as the tiebreak, or sudden death, was tested in this tournament.

If the score reaches six-all, the first player to win two points in a row wins. A tie-break is traditionally triggered when the score reaches in the final set. However, at Wimbledon, it will be Jamie Murray, who has won six grand slam doubles titles, has previously stated his preference for a final-set tie-break, though at rather than the double score. ES Money. The Escapist. When Talbert announced that the tournament would be played with sudden death when it was tied at 6 in a set, many tennis players openly criticized him.

The most curious thing was the reaction of the public, most of whom had no idea how it worked. To do this, Van Alen and Bill Talbert came up with something very curious.

When the tie was reached at six games, the referee raised a scarlet red flag with the letters S and D sudden death clearly visible and stamped in white. Also, although much smaller in size, the flag had a logo formed by a V crossed with an A Van Alen.

Rod Laver was the one who commented that the formula had been liked, but that an 8-point tiebreaker was too short to close an intense set.