Swiss tennis player Belinda Bencic and American Haley Baptiste played the longest tiebreak in a WTA tournament since the beginning of 2026. In the second round of the “thousandth” in Madrid, the athletes played out 30 points in the decisive tiebreak of the second set.
The Madrid tournament is a key event of the clay-court season. American Haley Baptiste created a sensation on her way to the round of 16 by defeating sixth seed Jasmine Paolini. On the other hand, 11th seed Belinda Bencic enters this match after a straight-set victory over Diana Schneider.
The match between Bencic and Baptiste lasted 2 hours and 44 minutes. The first set ended in a crushing defeat for the Swiss player with a score of 1:6, and in the second Bencic was one step away from being eliminated from the tournament, when Baptiste had a match point at the score of 6:5 in the second game. However, Belinda managed to transfer the set to a tiebreak, within which the tennis players played 30 points (16:14), which is the highest figure in the main draws of WTA tournaments since the beginning of the season. In total, the second set lasted 1 hour and 35 minutes.
Although this is the longest for the current season, it did not surpass the historical record of Grand Slam tournaments set at the Australian Open, where Anna Blinkova and Elena Rybakina played out 42 points (22:20) in a tiebreak.
Baptiste lost a total of six match points during the long tiebreak. The decisive moment was the American's fifth attempt to end the match with a score of 11:10 in her favor. After the missed chance, Baptiste smashed her racket, hitting it three times on the court and then bending her knee. For this incident, the umpire on the tower declared the tennis player a violation of the code.
Although Bencic won this tiebreak 16:14, Baptiste managed to regain the initiative in the third set and completed the match with a victory.
WTA 1000. Madrid, 1/8 finals.
Belinda Bencic (Switzerland) – Haley Baptiste (USA) – 1:2 (1:6, 7:6, 3:6)
The tournament in Madrid was a continuation of a series of unique statistical achievements in the 2026 tennis season. Earlier, at the Australian Open, a historical record was set in a match involving Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk: for the first time since 1968, all three sets in a single match in Melbourne ended in tiebreaks. Then Kostyuk lost in a match that lasted almost three and a half hours.
Baptiste will face the winner of the Aryna Sabalenka-Naomi Osaka match in the round of 16.
And in Madrid, the only representative of Ukraine, Marta Kostyuk, continues her performance, and in the next round she will play against American Katie McNally.