Break Fest at Wimbledon: Karen Khachanov wins a doozy of a fifth set over Sebastian Korda

WATCH: Sebastian Korda turned 21 on Manic Monday.

“The fifth set isn’t about tennis,” Boris Becker once allegedly said, “it’s about the heart.” He actually said “nerves,” not “heart,” but the latter sounds better, so we’ll go with it. Either way, the idea is the same: Once you get to a fifth, the winner is often the player who has the stronger will, rather than the better strokes.

Sebastian Korda celebrated his 21st birthday on Monday by playing the first fifth set of his career, and he learned the truth of Becker’s words. The final frame of his match with Karen Khachanov didn’t go as anyone would have scripted it, or anything like the four sets that preceded it. And the player with the cleaner strokes didn’t win it.

Korda and Khachanov split the first four sets in fairly typical fashion for a men’s match on grass. They hit big and held serve, rocketed forehands and two-handed backhands into the corners, and traded the momentum back and forth with each set. Korda played flawless tennis to win the first, Khachanov wrested control of the rallies from him to win the second and third, and Korda answered with rifle-shot returns and passes to take the fourth.

The idea that the fifth set would last 18 games and over an hour wouldn’t have been surprising. It’s the way it happened that left even the most veteran of tennis watchers gobsmacked.

Korda and Khachanov broke each other 13 times in the final set. By this stage, both were slightly gassed, and both had lost the direction on their first serves. That was enough, it seemed, to allow the other player to take over and dominate with their return games. Just when one of them looked poised to grab control of the match, he let it slip as soon as he took the balls to serve. Khachanov had a match point on his serve at 5-4, but Korda erased it with a reflex forehand volley. When Khachanov served for it again at 8-7 and fell behind, the Court 18 commentator said, with the understated disbelief that only a British commentator can convey, “Surely it can’t happen again.” It did; Korda broke for 8-8.

But that, finally, was the end of the line for the American. Khachanov, just a little stronger, a little more composed, and a little more utilitarian, broke at 8-8 and held—at love—for a 3-6, 6-4, 6-3, 5-7, 10-8 win in three hours and 49 minutes. His 19 aces to just six for Korda may have been a difference-maker in the end.

The idea that the fifth set would last 18 games and over an hour wouldn’t have been surprising. It’s the way it happened that left even the most veteran of tennis watchers gobsmacked.

If technique is destiny in tennis, we’ll be seeing Korda back in the second week at Wimbledon for many years to come, and winning the title more than once. His game is as smooth as it is complete, and cleaner than Khachanov’s. But Roger Federer aside, technique isn’t always enough. There’s physicality, there’s willfulness, there’s raw power, there’s composure and killer instinct. Until the fifth set today, Korda had been amazingly composed for someone who was playing at Wimbledon for the first time. But he lost some of that poise in the final set, and spent much of it glancing at his coaches in exasperation.

That said, it was an exasperating set, one almost without precedent in the men’s game. Korda has the heart and the skills to win plenty of fifth sets, but this time it was Khachanov who had more experience, and he used it. As Becker might say, he had the nerve to win.