Clarke and Norrie lose fifth set 22-20 in three-day epic

Tim Henman and Goran Ivanisevic, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut – Wimbledon yesterday added another match to its pantheon of three-day epics as Britain’s Jay Clarke and Cameron Norrie lost 22-20 in an agonising fifth set.

Adding to the absurdity of it all, just two hours after losing, Clarke was back on court to play mixed doubles, where he was a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 winner with fellow Brit Harriet Dart against Robert Lindstedt and Yang Zhaoxuan.

Norrie and Clarke finally succumbed to a 6-4, 6-7, 5-7, 6-4, 22-20 defeat against Marcelo Arevalo of El Salvador and Chile’s Hans Podlipnik-castillo.

In total games terms, it was the joint-second longest men’s doubles match at Wimbledon since the introduction of the tie-break. It was also the fourth longest by duration. Overall, the match lasted 5hr 2min, 87 games and 521 points. The fifth set alone went on for 144 minutes, during which time France started and finished their World Cup quarter-final against Uruguay.

But the raw numbers do not do justice to a first-round match that became an exhausting battle of nerve. As the final set wore on Arevalo and Podlipnik-castillo started to dominate and held eight match points before finally sealing victory on the ninth.

During proceedings Norrie’s mind wandered to Isner and Mahut’s 70-68 final set in 2010. “I was thinking about the Isner one,” he said. “A statue would have been nice.” Clarke added: “I think our match was long enough.”

Elsewhere the men’s fifth seeds Jamie Murray and Brazilian partner Bruno Soares routed Albert Ramosvinolas and Paolo Lorenzi 7-5, 6-2, 6-1 to reach the second round.