What Is a "Double Bagel" in Tennis?

Let us talk about one of the hardest things to do in tennis. No, not winning a Grand Slam. Winning a Grand Slam final without giving your opponent a single game.

Iga Swiatek beat Amanda Anisimova in the 2025 Wimbledon women's final by doing exactly that. Score: 6-0, 6-0. Time: 57 minutes. In tennis slang the result has a name: the "double bagel".

Why a "bagel"?

It is no accident that tennis players look at a zero and see a bagel: round, hollow in the middle, cold to look at. When the score is 6-0 the loser is said to have been "fed a bagel". If both sets end 6-0, that is two bagels — a "double bagel".

The term was popularised in the 1970s by the American player Eddie Dibbs. He was the one who spread the idea that the zeros looked like bagels around the tennis circuit. It has been in the sport's unofficial dictionary ever since.

Why is it so rare?

A set finishing 6-0 is normal; it happens often enough even in big matches. Both sets finishing 6-0 is another story. The player who loses the first set 6-0 usually regroups, finds a rhythm and manages to steal a game or two. Taking the second set to love as well means never letting your opponent breathe.

What Swiatek did was historic in that sense. The 2025 Wimbledon final was the first double bagel in a Wimbledon women's final since 1911. For 114 years no final on those courts had been that one-sided. It was not just a score; it was history.

A final in 57 minutes

An average Grand Slam final lasts more than two hours. Some run to four or five. Swiatek finished hers in 57 minutes. Spectators settling into their seats might have found the match already over.

That is a technical and a psychological performance. Anisimova is not a poor player; she reached a final. But Swiatek found such form that day that her opponent genuinely had no options. Every ball deep, every serve on the spot, every step right. Tennis historians call it "the perfect day": that rare day when everything goes right for a player.

The aesthetics of zero

Terms like "bagel" show the poetic side of the game. A sport lives through its stories and metaphors as much as its numbers and statistics. A bagel is far more than a cold mathematical zero.

And perhaps this is the beauty of tennis: as an amateur you can win a set 6-0 too. You speak the same language. You use the same slang. It is possible to live a small version of what Swiatek did, at your own level. All it takes is the right day, the right opponent and the right rhythm.

You learn these subtleties on court, not from a book. If finding a regular opponent is what stops you — and for most amateur players it is — Sporsepeti's Find an Opponent feature matches you with players at your level. Maybe one day you will hand out a bagel, or take one. Both are part of tennis.

The point is being on court. The score comes after. 🎾