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OK bagels are tasty but how did that term ever get applied to tennis? As in a 6-0 bagel set or worse a double bagel? I doubt you ever thought of it but…
It started innocently enough. Former tour player Harold Solomon, interviewed by Bud Collins, described a 6-0 set as a bagel. Makes sense.
Though more elliptical than the traditional doughnut, bagels are also roundish baked goods with holes in the center shaped similarly to the number zero. Little could Solomon have envisioned the serendipity of the moment, that calling a 6-0 set a bagel would become tennis lingo royalty.
Solomon coined it. Collins ran with it. And here we are, 50 years later, with the double bagel still the most ominous score of all tennis lore.
Like history, tennis scores are reported by the winners; the conquered and vanquished have little input, especially the bageled. In the zero-sum world of tennis scoring, winners advance, losers go home, with the final score not always telling the whole story.
There’s no special notation for fighting hard, no partial credit for playing great, no asterisk for having chances or keeping it respectable. And when you get dropped double bagel style, there’s…