{"id":6094,"date":"2026-01-17T12:18:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=6094"},"modified":"2026-01-17T12:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T12:18:04","slug":"australian-open-2026-sebastian-ofner-celebrates-early-before-losing-to-nishesh-basavareddy-in-qualifying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=6094","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open 2026: Sebastian Ofner celebrates early before losing to Nishesh Basavareddy in qualifying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Sebastian Ofner made a sorry exit from Australian Open qualifying after forgetting the rules and celebrating victory early &#8211; before going on to lose the match.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Austrian thought he had clinched victory over Nishesh Basavareddy at 7-1 in the third-set tie-break and raised his arms in celebration, pointing at his head as he walked towards the net to shake hands with his American opponent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, final-set tie-breaks are played to 10 points, meaning he still needed another three points to win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ofner only realised his mistake when the umpire briefly spoke to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Basavareddy then reeled off eight of the next nine points on the way to winning 4-6 6-4 7-6 (13-11) and advancing to the final round of qualifying at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 20-year-old held his hands to his neck in a &#8216;choking&#8217; gesture before letting out a roar of celebration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;In a super [match] tie-break, you always have a chance, so I kept believing,&#8221; Basavareddy <a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/articles\/news\/basavareddy-benefits-ofners-scoreboard-stumble\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">told the Australian Open website.<span class=\"visually-hidden ssrcss-1f39n02-VisuallyHidden e16en2lz0\">, <!-- -->external<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I saw him tense up a little bit, but the balls were quite old there, so every rally was a war.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Basavareddy will face Britain&#8217;s George Loffhagen for a place in the Australian Open main draw.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sebastian Ofner made a sorry exit from Australian Open qualifying after forgetting the rules and celebrating victory early &#8211; before going on to lose the match. The Austrian thought he had clinched victory over Nishesh Basavareddy at 7-1 in the third-set tie-break and raised his arms in celebration, pointing at his head as he walked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}