In
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...
, a golden set is a
set
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
which is won without losing a single point. This means scoring the 24 minimum points required to win the set
6–0, without conceding any points.
In professional tennis, this has occurred twice in the
main draw of top-level events. It has also happened a number of times in the pre-tournament qualifier of the lowest-level events.
Bill Scanlon
William Neil Scanlon (November 13, 1956 – June 2, 2021) was a tennis player from the United States, who won seven singles and two doubles titles during his 13-year professional career. The right-hander reached his career-high ATP singles ...
had a golden second set in his win over
Marcos Hocevar
Marcos Hocevar (born 26 September 1955) is a former professional tennis player from Brazil.
During his career he finished runner-up at 2 singles events and won 1 doubles title. He achieved a career-high singles ranking of World No. 30 in 1983 a ...
at the 1983
Delray Beach WCT event.
Yaroslava Shvedova
Yaroslava Vyacheslavovna Shvedova (; born 12 September 1987) is a Kazakhstani former professional tennis player. Before 2008, she represented her country of birth, Russia.
She won one singles title and 13 doubles titles on the WTA Tour, plus o ...
had a golden first set in her win over
Sara Errani
Sara Errani (; born 29 April 1987) is an Italian professional tennis player. She is a former top five player in singles and former world No. 1 in doubles. With 9 singles titles and 27 doubles titles (including 5 Grand Slam doubles championship ...
at the
2012 Wimbledon Championships
The 2012 Wimbledon Championships was a tennis tournament played on grass courts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon, London in the United Kingdom. It was the 126th edition of the The Championships, Wimbledon, Wimbledon C ...
.
Tennis legend Steffi Graf came close to achieving the feat in the finals of the 1989 Virginia Slims of Washington tournament, winning the first five games to love against Zina Garrison, before winning the match 6-1, 7-5.
A golden match is when a player does not lose a single point in the entire match. There are five documented cases of this at low-level events.
Hazel Wightman
Hazel Virginia Hotchkiss Wightman, CBE (née Hotchkiss; December 20, 1886 – December 5, 1974) was an American tennis player and founder of the Wightman Cup, an annual team competition for British and American women. She dominated American wome ...
first did so in a 1910 amateur match in the state of
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
. Then it happened twice in France in the qualifiers of lowest-level professional events, two of them in the span of two months, both against the same 55-year-old man, Tomas Fabian. A more recent televised Golden Match, involved Krittin Koaykul beating Artem Bahmet during a qualifying match at
ITF World Tennis Tour
The ITF World Tennis Tour (formerly known as the ''ITF Men's World Tennis Tour'', and previously ''ITF Men's Circuit'') is a series of professional tennis tournaments held around the world that are organized by the International Tennis Federation. ...
event in Doha, and scoring the minimum 48 points to win.
List of occurrences
Main draws of top-level professional events are in boldface.
References
{{Tennis records and statistics
Tennis terminology
Tennis records and statistics
Perfect scores in sports