The Grand Slams are the only events where the biggest men's matches stretch to best-of-five sets, up to five hours of tennis to settle a single result. In an era obsessed with shorter formats and attention spans, it is fair to ask why the majors cling to it. The answer, and the recent change to how the final set is decided, reveals what these tournaments believe they are for.
What best-of-five actually tests
Best-of-three can be won in a hot 90 minutes. A player can catch fire, ride a purple patch of serving, and be gone before the better player has settled. Best-of-five is designed to prevent exactly that.
Over the longer distance, variance shrinks. A single good set is not enough. You have to solve the opponent, adjust, re-adjust, and sustain a level while fatigue erodes technique. The format tests a fuller range of qualities:
- Endurance, obviously, but also its cousins: recovery between points and the discipline to conserve energy.
- Problem-solving, because a plan that works in set one often stops working by set three, forcing genuine adaptation.
- Mental resilience, since a two-set lead can and does evaporate, and holding a lead is its own distinct skill.
The majors keep best-of-five precisely because it is the hardest, most complete examination the sport can offer. That difficulty is the point. It is what makes winning seven of them across two weeks the ultimate credential.
The old problem with the final set
For decades, the tournaments disagreed on how to end a deadlocked final set. Some played a normal tiebreak at 6-6. Others refused, requiring a two-game margin no matter how long it took, which produced the occasional monstrous set that ran to 20, 30, even more games.
Those marathons were romantic in memory and brutal in reality.
A record-breaking final set is a wonderful story and a scheduling catastrophe.
The problems were practical. Matches that ran absurdly long wrecked the schedule, exhausted players to the point that the winner had nothing left for the next round, and risked genuine injury. Worse, the four majors used four different final-set rules, so a player had to prepare for a different endgame at each event.
Why they standardized the tiebreak
The resolution was to adopt a common final-set tiebreak across the majors, typically an extended one played to ten points rather than seven, triggered at 6-6 in the deciding set.
The logic is a compromise between two values the sport cares about:
- Preserve the drama of a deciding set by keeping the tiebreak longer than a normal seven-pointer, so it still rewards the steadier player rather than a single lucky mini-break.
- Cap the chaos so no match can spiral into a physically dangerous, schedule-destroying epic.
The extra length of the final-set breaker matters. A ten-point tiebreak needs a two-point margin from seven, so it is hard to steal on a fluke. It still demands nerve. It just refuses to demand infinity.
What the format says about the sport
The best-of-five debate is really a debate about identity. Shorter formats sell energy and accessibility. Best-of-five sells depth and the sense that a champion has been thoroughly, exhaustively tested.
By keeping the five-set distance but standardizing a humane, dramatic ending, the majors made a clear statement: the ultimate test of tennis should be long and complete, but it should also, finally, agree with itself on how to end.