Unprecedented feat: Has a player achieved a triple bagel in a Grand Slam match?

Is it really possible to win a tennis set without losing a single game? 

Unprecedented feat: Has a player achieved a triple bagel in a Grand Slam match?

Sergi Bruguera, Ivan Lendl, Nikola Spear (Image via: Open source)

In tennis, a bagel refers to a player winning a set without losing a single game, i.e., winning a set 6-0 is referred to as a bagel.

It is already one of the rarest happenstances in tennis and is considered to be humiliating for the player it is pulled off against. A golden bagel is even more rare. It is a bagel where no point is lost. 

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It is similar to the term ‘duck’ in cricket and originated from a similar comparison as well. It’s called a bagel because of the similarity of the shape of a bagel with that of a zero.

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It was first coined by American commentator Harold Solomon and popularized by another American, Bud Collins. Bagels are usually seen in the early rounds of Grand Slam events as tournament top seeds play low-ranked players. 

Eight-time Grand Slam winner Jimmy Connors tops the list of the most bagels in the history of tennis. He has scored 198 bagels throughout his career.

He is followed by Guillermo Vilas and Ivan Lendl, who have 158 and 149 bagels to their names, respectively. The only active players in the top 10 of this list are Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Nadal sits at the 7th position with 120 bagels, while Djokovic is 9th with 113 bagels.  

Players who’ve achieved the rare ‘triple bagel’ feat in Grand Slam events 

A triple bagel is an instance when a player wins a best-of-five match without losing a single set. This means that a player has to win the first three sets 6-0 each, hence winning the match 6-0, 6-0, 6-0.

Todd Woodbridge
Todd Woodbridge (Image via: Open source)

It is the shortest possible length of a tennis match, apart from retirements or defaults. There have been only 17 instances when this has happened in the sport so far. 

Out of those, the chances of it happening in a Grand Slam is even less. That has happened a total of six times so far. Nikola Spear was the first person to win by a triple bagel against Daniel Contet in a Grand Slam. He did it in the first round of the 1968 French Open. 

The six Grand Slam matches that ended with a triple bagel: 

  1. Nikola Spear vs Daniel Contest – 1968 French Open (1st round)
  2. Karel Novacek vs Eduardo Bengoechea -1987 French Open (2nd round)
  3. Stefan Edberg vs Stefan Eriksson – 1987 Wimbledon (1st Round)
  4. Ivan Lendl vs Barry Moir – 1987 US Open (1st Round)
  5. Sergi Bruguera vs Thierry Champion – French Open 1993 (2nd Round)
  6. Todd Woodbridge vs Johan Ortegren – Wimbledon 2001 (Q3)

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