Holger Rune eats up Davidovich Fokina's underhand serve, completes comeback on next point

By now, Holger Rune and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina are all too familiar with winner-take-all situations on the Grand Slam stage.

With their third-round match going the distance at Wimbledon Saturday, Rune has now played out a decisive tiebreaker at every major tournament this season. Davidovich Fokina found himself in the situation for the fourth time in five majors, with three coming at SW19 since 2022.

Rune saved two match points at 4-5 in the fifth set, then ultimately squeaked past Davidovich Fokina in a near-four-hour war with a 6-3, 4-6, 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (10-8) victory on No. 3 Court.

With his winning performance, the Dane has now reached the second week at every Grand Slam event this season.

“It was unbelievable. It’s one of the most fun matches I’ve ever played. It’s a quite small court, but you guys made it absolutely amazing,” he said in an on-court interview as chants of “Ruuuuune!” emerged. “It’s a great moment, for sure. It’s going much better than I expected.”

Much will be made about the way Davidovich Fokina let his latest heartbreak loss slip through. Beyond the pair of missed match points, the Spaniard built a 6-2 cushion in the 10-point tiebreaker, and later led 8-5.

But it was a decision at 8-8 that left everyone speechless. Having seen his final mini-break advantage erased, Davidovich Fokina all but lost the plot. He rushed the net behind an underhand first serve and Rune wasn’t fooled in the slightest, passing him with a crosscourt forehand winner. The world No. 6 clinched the victory when the Spaniard netted a crosscourt forehand, an ending that saw Rune seize the final five points of the contest.

On his foe’s failed sneak ploy, Rune said, “I was not expecting that it was going to come. Actually, it was nice because he was serving unbelievable. So I was like, ‘it’s a chance to get a match point.’ Again, I was not expecting it. I had to be fast.”

The strange ending has shades of 2022 for the No. 31 seed, whose decisive tie-break in a second-round encounter with Jiri Vesely at the All England Club last year ended when Davidovich Fokina received a point penalty code violation for ball abuse. That loss followed prevailing in an opening final-set tiebreaker over seventh seed Hubert Hurkacz.

For Rune, he’s figured out that patience pays off in the 10-point format since his crushing finish at the Australian Open. In Melbourne, he held match point on Andrey Rublev, only to fall 11-9 in the end. At Roland Garros, Rune was down 3-5 and 6-7 to Francisco Cerundolo in their fourth-round, final-set breaker, but survived 10-7.

Rune awaits the winner of 10th seed Frances Tiafoe and 21st seed Grigor Dimitrov for a chance to make his third Grand Slam quarterfinal, and first away from Roland Garros. The Bulgarian won the first two sets and was on serve in the third when rain suspended play.