By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Saturday February 12, 2022
Reilly Opelka topped John Isner after winning the longest tiebreak in ATP history on Sunday in Dallas.
Photo Source: Getty
When Reilly Opelka and John Isner square off, we expect tiebreakers. The pair have now played 12 in succession after their most recent showdown in Dallas – but they’ve never played a tiebreak quite like this.
And they've rewritten the ATP record books as a result.
Opelka defeated Isner 7-6(7), 7-6(22), to claim the longest tiebreak on the ATP Tour since records have been officially kept – 1990.
According to the ATP Tour, the breaker is the longest men’s singles tie-break at the ATP Tour level on record since 1970 when the tiebreak was introduced.
Opelka saved ten set points to win the wild breaker, which featured a run of 26 points by the server that ended on match point, when the 24-year-old American converted his eighth match point to improve to 4-1 against Isner overall.
23rd-ranked Opelka will face Jenson Brooksby or Marcos Giron in Sunday’s final, as he bids for his third ATP title.
Unlike Isner’s other claim to fame – his marathon 11 hour and five-minute victory over Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon in 2010, a match that finished over three days and ended as the longest in tennis history – Saturday's battle didn't go his way. No matter how lights-out he serves he can’t seem to crack the Opelka code in the breakers.
Thirteen of the fifteen sets that Opelka and Isner have played across their five matches have ended in tiebreaks, with Opelka, impressively, winning 10.
Isner and Opelka have now held serve 98 consecutive times collectively against one another. The American pair, which totals 13’9” in height (Isner is 6’10” and Opelka is 6”11), fired a total of 60 aces – 39 for Opelka, which is six shy of the record for a three-set match
The tiebreak itself lasted over 34 minutes.