How to win a Tiebreak 101
Feat. Miami Open (2025) Professor of Tiebreaks Jakub Menšík, and Professor Emeritus Novak Djokovic
The scoring system in tennis is convoluted: it is a hierarchical scoring system that muddies the relationship between points scored and the final outcome. Score the most number of goals in (European) football? You win. Hit the lowest number of strokes on a golf course? You win. Win the most points in a tennis match? Ehhh, maybe not.
To complicate things further, there is the tiebreak: when the set comes to a 6:6 deadlock (of games, not points), players play a modified format with completely different (read: intuitive) scoring: first to 7 (points, not games), win by 2. Winning a tiebreak can feel like the ultimate validation of a hard-won set, or maybe even a sigh of relief because you got away with one. Losing a tiebreak is invariably deflating, because you put in all that hard work for nothing.
Across 3,076 ATP Tour-Level Matches1 in 2024 (as ever, thanks to Jeff Sackmann of the Match Charting Project, there were 7,929 total sets played. Of these, roughly 18.5% (1,217) were tiebreaks. By extension, 39.6% (1,217) of the ATP matches played last year had at least one tiebreak. All this to say, tiebreaks come up a fair amount, and for the most part, they are a coin flip.
Enter Jakub Menšík, whom I wrote this about after the Australian Open:
The next few months of the tournament calendar are not kind to Menšík, with a steady diet of clay courts (on which he is an unknown quantity), and slow hard courts (which blunt his first serve effectiveness), so we may not have a lot to gauge his progress on until we get to the grass courts and the summer hard court swing, where he should be able to make significant strides up the rankings.
I don’t know what came over me (I am stupid, probably) because I completely forgot that Miami (a faster hard court) existed. To make my prediction look even worse, Menšík had to go and win the whole thing.
My own existential crisis as a credible tennis writer and knower of ball aside, Menšík became the fifth youngest player to win an ATP Master 1000 title (which, come to think of it, is triggering an entirely separate existential crisis). He also did so by winning all 7 of the tiebreaks that he played during the tournament (sorry for the little detour but we got back to the point eventually).
What’s even more impressive is the caliber of player he won these tiebreaks against:
2 against Jack Draper, fresh off an Indian Wells title (52.5% career tiebreak record)
1 against Arthur Fils, fellow Next-Gen and world no.15 (56.8%)
2 against Taylor Fritz, US Open 2024 finalist (55.4%)
2 against Novak Djokovic, noted God of Tiebreaks (65.7%!!)
These players are not only strong opponents (rankings are 7, 15, 4, and 5, respectively), but they are all above average (better than a coin flip) at winning tiebreaks.
So how did Menšík manage to beat them all in tiebreaks? Is there something about his game that makes him particularly good at winning tiebreaks? At what point does the word tiebreak sound weird in my head and lose all meaning?
Tiebreaks with Servebot Characteristics
It should be noted that prior to this hot streak, Menšík’s record in tiebreaks was 23-13, or a 63.9% win rate, so he’s exceptional in this format. One of the parts of his game that aids him in this format is his prodigious serve. I won’t go into what makes his serve so special from a technical perspective, as smarter minds than me have already covered that, but there is no denying that it is effective.
In the 7 tiebreaks Menšík played in Miami, his 1st serve percentage was a staggeringly high 73% (27/37). This is a massive upgrade compared to his 2025 season average of 61%.
One thing Menšík does is lean into his favorite targets on his first serve in the tiebreak. On the Deuce side, it’s the flat serve down the T (69% of deuce court 1st serves); on the Ad, it’s the flat serve out wide (86% of ad court first serves). Here’s a supercut of every serve Menšík hit against Jack Draper in their first tiebreak:
For those counting at home, that’s:
5 made 1st serves on 5 service points (100% 1st serves in)
4 aces and 1 unreturned serve (100% unreturned serves)
Absolutely 0 variation in serve location
While this was a abnormally great tiebreak performance, Menšík’s serve performance was also otherwise outstanding in the Miami tiebreaks (and frankly throughout the tournament). He hit 10 aces and 10 unreturned serves on 37 total service points, for an unreturned serve rate of about 54%. This means on half of the points he was serving, he did not have to hit another shot because that ball was not coming over. If a player on average serves about 5-7 points in a tiebreak, Menšík was basically guaranteeing that he was starting the tiebreak with roughly a 2-3 point head start.
On second serves, Menšík also outperformed his season averages, winning 70% of points on his second serve compared to 48% year to date in 2025. Part of this is absolutely due to small sample size (he only played 10 second serve points across 7 tiebreaks). Part of this was also due to an active decision to hit harder second serves (we’ve covered Menšík’s very slow second serve before), particularly in the final against Djokovic (as pointed out by Gill Gross). That said, hitting a harder second serve rarely yields a missed return; Menšík still had to win the point from a rally, which brings us to the second point…
Somebody’s Missing, and It Ain’t Gonna be Me…
…is probably something Menšík said to get himself in the right mindset going into these tiebreaks. By and large, that was true; of the 46 points in Menšík’s Miami tiebreaks that lasted more than 2 shots (both the serve and the return were in play), here was the breakdown:
Menšík: 7 Winners, 10 Unforced Errors, 3 Forced Errors. 28 total points won
Menšík’s Opponents: 5 Winners, 17 Unforced Errors, 4 Forced Errors, 18 total points won
Another way to think about it is that of the points Menšík won in a rally, his own offensive pressure created 11 of those points (7 winners and 4 opponent forced errors), while his opponents’ own mistakes (unforced errors) led to 17 of those points. By contrast, his opponents’ offensive pressure created 8 points, and Menšík’s mistakes gave up 10 points. Not only was Menšík’s overall game less error-prone than his opponents, he had a positive differential between his offensive creation (11 points) and his mistakes (10 points).
Here’s an example of Menšík veering pretty far into the counterpunching, consistent end of the aggression spectrum: he takes one aggressive cut at a forehand around his shoulder level (a shot he likes because he can use his height and his natural swing to flatten the ball out), hits two crosscourt backhands, and eventually Draper hits a ball into the middle of the court. For a more offensively-minded player, this is an opportunity to run around to hit the forehand, inject some pace into the rally and put the opponent on the defensive. Not so for Menšík, who does find his forehand with the shot, but hits it fairly tamely inside-out back to Draper’s forehand. Draper, now sensing this is his opportunity to win the point, tries to attack with his forehand, only for the ball to sail slightly long.
Menšík is presented with a similar opportunity in his first tiebreak against Taylor Fritz, and he is more proactive here, hitting a wider forehand that pulls Fritz out of position, before hitting a winner into the open court. Even in this point, Menšík is not aiming for the lines: in fact, the forehand that sets up his winner lands on the service line, and nowhere near the singles sideline, and his winner lands pretty comfortably inside the court as well.
The longer the point goes, the more conservative Menšík’s targets get: if I drew lines on the court that split the court vertically into quarters, the vast majority of balls Menšík hits would go into the middle 2 quadrants. In this point, Menšík hits 5 groundstrokes after his return. If I’m feeling charitable, he hits two shots that that land in the outer quarters of the court, and even the second one (the last backhand down the line) lands in the outer quarter to Fritz’s forehand, but is coming back into the court so Fritz can hit it pretty close to the middle.
One of the reasons for Menšík’s relative passivity in his baseline game: his forehand does not have the offensive venom of other top-tier players (Hugh Clarke in A Thread of Order does a deep dive on some of the technical limitations behind Menšík’s forehand):
As a result, when Menšík changes direction with his forehand, it’s more so to shift a rally into a cross-court backhand exchange, where he is much more comfortable. In this point, Fritz is constantly looking for an opportunity to attack the Menšík forehand, going down the line with his backhand to try to get into a cross-court forehand exchange, and Menšík quickly bails out, trying to go down the line with his forehand as soon as possible. Ironically, the lack of speed and spin on the Menšík forehand proves to be an advantage, as Menšík eventually gets a chance to hit an approach shot, and hits the ball so short and flat that Fritz is left having to dig near his ankles to try to hit a passing shot, and misses.
Opponents are well aware of Menšík’s lack of threat on the forehand wing, but are sometimes too quick to try and exploit it, especially when it’s their backhand. Here’s Arthur Fils trying to pull the trigger on a backhand down the line on the first ball he gets after his return.
Here’s Djokovic, also going for the low-margin shot a little too early in the rally, trying to send a backhand down the line to Menšík’s forehand wing but clipping the net in the process:
And here’s Djokovic again, this time on the forehand side, being a little overzealous with the forehand plus-one off his serve, and sending his shot long:
One thing Menšík does have going for him on the forehand wing: he’s a great mover and and can get in and out of the forehand corner very quickly. His movement, combined with his conservative shot selection, and the fact that when he’s winning the point every time he’s serving, pushes his opponents to try and take every half-chance they can get, upping their own risk appetite and tallying more errors.
This is a story about a girl named Lucky
We cannot ignore the fact that luck played a huge part in Menšík winning seven tiebreaks in a row in Miami. Jeff Sackmann does a great job of illustrating how statistically improbable it is:
Replay the tournament, and some of those seven breakers will almost certainly not go the same way, no matter how calm the Czech is under pressure. The odds of converting all seven tiebreaks against this competition is about 2.5%.
There were a ton of what-ifs that could have completely changed the outcomes of every one of the tiebreaks that Menšík played. What if Draper didn’t gift a double fault in both tiebreaks to hand Menšík a set and match point? What if Fils didn’t make a mess of returning Menšík’s second serve at 4:3? What if Fritz just played a regular aggressive forehand return instead of trying to nuke Menšík’s 80mph second serve at 0:0 in the third set tiebreak? What if the final wasn’t 3 hours after Djokovic’s normal bedtime (jkjk)?
However unlikely it was, the fact remains that Menšík did win all of those tiebreaks, and with them the Miami Open title as well. While there are obvious question marks about his game that haven’t entirely gone away with this win, the question on my mind is: if Menšík can win a Masters title with an attackable second serve and a so-so forehand, and beat the Tiebreak GOAT at his own game, what heights can Menšík reach when he makes even a little improvement in each of those areas? Perhaps a few more mentions alongside Fonseca as the next member of the hype train:
Includes Davis Cup World Group and Finals ties, and United Cup matches. Does not include Laver Cup. Walkovers are also logged as completed matches.