The World Tennis League is not affiliated with the ATP or WTA, so organizers are at liberty to enforce the rules they want at the event.
Because of that, Casper Ruud ended up eliminating his team on Saturday and prevented them from headlining the final match on Christmas Eve despite winning his match.
For context, the World Tennis League is a four-team tournament played on indoor hard courts in Abu Dhabi. The four teams, Kites, Eagles, Falcons, and Hawks, battled in the first three days in a round-robin format, with each tie featuring at least five matches – three in doubles and two in singles.
The high number of matches per session means the tournament instilled a unique scoring format. Each match would only last a full set. And in case of parity in a tie, a super tiebreak would be required to determine the overall winner.
Ruud, who represented the Hawks, was playing Grigor Dimitrov of Kites in the final match of the tie. With the Bulgarian winning one game, his team was guaranteed to play the final on Sunday. However, former World No. 2 Ruud needed to win in a specific way to qualify his team, too.
Hawks scored 66 points ahead of that final match between Ruud and Dimitrov. That meant Ruud needed to win 10 points for the Hawks (who won last year’s inaugural title) to reach the final.
But because the Norwegian was only playing one set and the maximum points he could earn was seven (for winning seven games in the set), he would be aided by the tournament’s scoring format, which offers an additional point for winning a super tiebreak and two bonus points.
Ruud won the match 6-4, which meant that the tie finished 20-19 in favor of his team, but not enough in the final standings because they finished with 72 points and not 76 points. Ruud needed to win the match 7-6 through a tiebreak.
That would have put the score for the tie at 21-21, and a super tiebreak would be needed. Winning the super tiebreak would have guaranteed bonus points, making his team’s final tally 76 points.
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