Iga Swiatek had a chance to win the tie for her team at the 2023 World Tennis League against Elena Rybakina, but ultimately she came up short.
Even though it looked like the Falcons had it in the bag after the first three matches with a 19-12 lead, Casper Ruud annulled it with a superb performance against Taylor Fritz 6-1.
Winning three out of 5 ultimately wasn't enough for the Falcons due to the unique format. The exhibition tournament features a unique format where players are paired up in four teams of four, with each tie between teams consisting of 5 matches.
Each match is basically one set, and three of the five matches are doubles, with the remaining two matches being singles. Each game won in each match counts as one point, which matters most.
At the end of each tie, the winning team is the one that has the most points. Now, obviously, because of how math works, the team that wins 3 out of the five likely wins the tie unless the other team manages to win a match dominantly 6-0 or 6-1.
That's exactly what happened in the Ruud and Fritz match, and it allowed Iga Swiatek to almost win the tie for her team. She needed to win it at least 6-4 to force the overtime and was able to do so with a really late push to take the first set 6-4.
The overtime was because the score between the teams was 24-24 in points after five sets. The overtime was a match tie-break till ten, and Rybakina started better. She took a 3-1 lead trying to pull out the win for her team, but the Polish player had other plans.
She pulled it back to 3-3, but Rybakina still went ahead once more. The Kazakhstani player actually led for much of the tiebreak, but Swiatek made it interesting at 8-8.
Still, it was Rybakina who ended up winning it 10-8 and saving her team. The Falcons beat the Hawks.
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