Since baseball is taking an all-star break and Bob is traveling, I thought that I would step in and provide a moment of non-baseball sports commentary (on a baseball blog, I know). While we here at Bob’s Baseball Blog relish the beauty of America’s game, across the pond at Wimbledon occurred one of the rarest accomplishments in all of sports.
A tennis set consists of winning six games before your opponent has won four. A game can be won with a minimum of four points played. A perfect set, therefore, is a set where you win 6-0 and all 24 points. Professionally this has only been accomplished one other time, by Bill Scanlon in 1983. That makes a Perfect Set (or “Golden Set”, according to tennis lore) more rare than baseball’s perfect game by an order of magnitude.
Add to Scanlon’s name that of Yaroslava Shvedova, who achieved the milestone against Sara Errani, the French Open runner up–not a weak qualifier but a champion-caliber opponent. While Shvedova went on to lose to the eventual champion later in the tournament, let us pause for a moment to reflect on tennis greatness.
And now back to baseball…