The 3rd set tie break issue (or: How important is doubles for the players?)

At 6-6 (against the Williams sisters),
Kirilenko and Petrova asked the umpire if there's a tiebreak.

I don't know a lot about doubles but I know that Kirilenko/Petrova won some tournaments and are one of the best 10 doubles team.

How is it possible that they don't know the rules for a Grand Slam match!?

They lead 4-1 and lost 7-9 and I don't think it was good for them that there were no tiebreak, especially because the momentum was their side until (let's say 6-6) and the info that there is no tiebreak probably affected them a bit.

I just want to ask you if this a specific case in doubles and the rules are not 100% clear because doubles are by far not as important as singles?
Or is that just a silly mistake from the russians?

What do you think?

Probably because every GS has different TB rules in doubles :shrug:

If I'm not mistaken, at 2007 AO R1, Sharapova also thought that it should be a tiebreak when it was 6-6

Think the French and United States Open have a deciding tiebreak while Australian Open and Wimbledon continues on until a team break and hold(or hold and break) their last service game after score is 6-all

They don't know because Wimbledon is the only Slam that doesn't use a tiebreak nowadays in the final set. Australian and French have changed to tiebreak final sets, and US Open always has been that way.