6-0, 5-0, 40-0. So what?
Forty years ago, the greatest comeback in tennis history took place. Trailing 6-0, 5-0, and 40-0, Barbie Bramblett managed to beat Ann Hulbert in the US Open qualifiers, canceling 18 match points. In another match, she even canceled 20. Her career would end in 1985, at just 21 years of age.
When she won the Orange Bowl in 1980, Barbara Christine Bramblett (known to all as Barbie) received a call from Nick Bollettieri. Just two years earlier, she had opened her own academy, and was scouting for talent. The blonde Texan had struck him. “But I thought that the training program I had followed up to that point would allow me to be successful,” recalls Bramblett, who is now 59 and teaches tennis at The Downtown Club in Houston. Who knows if her career would have been different if she had accepted Bollettieri’s proposal. She remained on the circuit for four years, with results that were all in all negligible: a best ranking of number 60, zero tournaments won, seven Slam appearances (with as many defeats in the first round) and no truly important victories, even if she can say she beat Lori McNeil and Helena Sukova, but only among the juniors. Barbie stopped playing in 1985, shortly before turning 21. “I was always traveling alone between Asia and Europe. I had no support, I was young and unprepared,” she says, “there was no one I could talk to after a defeat, I didn’t know the game.” Bye bye professionalism, with no regrets. For about twenty years she taught tennis and painting, only to let her personality explode when she was over forty, with a couple of degrees and the writing of two books.
Yet, her name remains engraved in the history of tennis: she is the author of the greatest comeback ever. A crazy feat, matured from the most extreme score situation: 6-0, 5-0 and 40-0. It was August 25, 1983 when she took to the court against Ann Hulbert, in the second round of the US Open qualifiers. A challenge between young promises, still eighteen years old. Born in 1965, Hulbert could still participate in the junior event: a couple of weeks later she would win the doubles title. A one-sided match, to the point that Barbie's mother left the stands when she realized there was nothing to be done. "At 5-0 and 40-0 I thought the match was over, and I was deeply embarrassed," Bramblett said in a couple of interviews, "but then my game suddenly improved, I would say it was a real miracle. Every ball landed on the line, I couldn't believe what was happening." She saved match points one after another. In the end there would be eighteen. “But at 5-4 I realized I had a chance to win.” And she would win: 0-6 7-5 6-3.
"My game suddenly improved, I would say it was a miracle. Every ball landed on the line, I couldn't believe what was happening." Barbie Bramblett
“The next time you’re down 6-0, 5-0 and 40-0 in a tennis match and think a comeback is impossible, think of Barbie Bramblett,” wrote the September 2, 1983 edition, before later reporting that the match against Hepner was postponed to Wednesday because of rain. Trailing 6-1 4-2, Bramblett managed to win the second set. “Some points lasted nearly three and a half minutes, with 90-shot rallies,” wrote the NY Times. “Hepner received two warnings for time violations; under WTA rules, a third violation would have been grounds for disqualification.” The third set was also a battle, but after coming back to 3-3, Barbie gave up the last three games. That would be enough for a lasting memory, but she wanted to do more: a few months earlier, she had made a similar comeback at the Nashville tournament. Trailing 6-2 5-0 against Kathy Holton, she would manage the feat of canceling 20 match points and winning with a score of 2-6 7-6 6-3. To date, the world record for match points canceled before winning a match. These feats will mark her forever, a bit like what happened to the legendary soccer player Antonin Panenka, who went down in history for having invented the chip penalty. They still look for him today, to ask him for a memento.
Barbie Bramblett has more or less the same fate, even though she has tried to break away from that memory by building a very respectable career. In 2007, she graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in History and English Literature. As if that weren’t enough, in 2012 she earned a Master’s degree in instructional design and technology. While teaching tennis, she worked as an instructional designer at the University of Houston’s School of Nursing, as well as developing and creating several websites. All this without forgetting her hobby of painting: her landscapes and portraits, painted in watercolor, have been exhibited in several shows. Barbie turned 59 on September 14 and recently celebrated the fortieth anniversary of that sensational comeback, but she wouldn’t make a drama out of it if there wasn’t someone to remember it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, at the time there wasn’t the information bombardment of today. No cameras, no internet, no social media. Just a short article in the newspaper that the web managed to track down, without even specifying the number of match points cancelled. “The chair umpire told me that when we shook hands. I knew I had cancelled match points, but when you are behind you don’t start counting them”. Someone else thought about it.
