Tennis players save match points regularly, but often crash out of a tournament soon after. But sometimes, a great save sets the stage for a big win.
Holger Rune should have been out of the Paris Masters in the first round last year.
Rune faced Stan Wawrinka in a contentious opening match that didn’t finish until after midnight. After saving three match points, Rune beat Wawrinka, a three-time major champion, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (3), and went on to win the whole tournament, his first Masters 1000 crown. Along the way, he upset five top-10 players, including the world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz and the six-time champion Novak Djokovic in the final. The win placed him into the world’s top 10 for the first time.
Match points are saved in tennis with the regularity of a metronome. Most often, a player performs these death-defying acts early in the tournament then falters before the latter rounds. But sometimes, saving a match point can motivate a player for an entire week.
In 2021, winning players saved match points in 58 main-draw matches on the WTA Tour. Only four times, though, did someone come back to win the tournament. Naomi Osaka did it at the Australian Open when she rebounded from 3-5 down in the final set to beat Garbiñe Muguruza in the fourth round and then defeated Serena Williams in the semifinals and Jennifer Brady in the final.
Ashleigh Barty won the Miami Open over Bianca Andreescu but only after hitting a return winner down the line to save a match point against 149th-ranked Kristina Kucova in the second round.
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