Men's match goes overnight at Australian

From Staff and Wire Reports

A smile creased Daniil Medvedev’s face as he walked to the net in Rod Laver Arena at 3:39 a.m., finally a winner in the Australian Open’s second round after five sets spread across nearly 4 ½ hours in the third-latest finish in Grand Slam history.

Zero chance Medvedev would have been there at that time if he didn’t need to be. If he were one of the spectators in the nearly empty stands, and a match stretched past, say, 1 a.m., the 2021 U.S. Open champion said, “I would be like, ‘OK, let’s go home. We’re going to catch the end of the match on the TV. Going to watch 30 minutes, then go to bed.’”

So why were Medvedev, a two-time runner-up at Melbourne Park, and the man he beat 3-6, 6-7 (1), 6-4, 7-6 (1), 6-0 in a match that began there Thursday and concluded Friday, Emil Ruusuvuori ... and the chair umpire ... and the ball people ... and the (few) spectators who remained still awake so late?

That’s not the sort of thing that happens in other sports.

“No one should be playing tennis at 330am. This is looney tunes,” was a sentiment expressed by John Isner on social media and surely shared by others. Isner, of course, knows a thing or two about playing forever: He won the longest match in tennis history, an 11-hour, 5-minute marathon spread over three days at Wimbledon in 2010.

Among the reasons for the late start is that the match that preceded theirs — Anna Blinkova’s upset of 2022 Wimbledon champion and 2023 Australian Open finalist Elena Rybakina — lasted more than 2 ½ hours and included a record-setting 22-20 tiebreaker.

It was also a day of ripple effects, because only eight of the 32 singles matches, including one of 16 in the men’s bracket, were done in straight sets (which is two sets for women, who play a maximum of three, and three sets for men, who play a maximum of five).

Kings GM Rob Blake remains optimistic

Kings General Manager Rob Blake offered assessments Thursday of a club that began the year looking like short-list Stanley Cup contenders but, at its midway mark, finds itself spiraling downward, losing nine of its past 10 games. Their precipitous drop from the West’s top team by points percentage to the dead center of the conference left Blake undeterred. He thinks the Kings still have the ingredients in their mix, and will see how they respond to the heat of the second-half oven.

“This is our group. This is what we assembled this summer. We knew (the) salary cap would be tough. We knew roster spots would be tough. But it’s this group that will pull out of it,” Blake said.

That group, Blake reaffirmed, would include coach Todd Mclellan, when asked multiple questions regarding the possibility of a coaching change given the limited opportunity to add or exchange onice personnel.

“Yeah, no, not at all,” Blake said. “Our philosophy here is on the structure and the system and the design and the buy-in of the players, and he’s gotten that from the players. I’m going to rely on the players and the leadership to get us out of that.” --Andrew Knoll

Angel City signs teenage forward Phair

Sixteen-year-old Casey Phair, the youngest player at last summer’s Women’s

World Cup as a forward for South Korea, has signed with Angel City of the National Women’s Soccer League.

Phair was signed through 2026 via the league’s under-18 entry mechanism, the Los Angeles-based team announced Thursday. She is Angel City’s youngest-ever signing.

Phair, the daughter of an American father and South Korean mother, was born in South Korea but grew up in the United States. She appeared in the World Cup at 16 years and 26 days, entering South Korea’s opening match against Colombia as a substitute.

■ Christian Pulisic was voted the U.S. Soccer Federation’s Male Player of the Year for the fourth time matching Landon Donovan for the most times receiving an award that began in 1998.

Athlete granted ninth year of eligibility

Miami tight end Cam Mccormick said Thursday that he is coming back for a ninth season of college football.

He is believed to be the first with a ninth season granted by the NCAA. Mccormick’s career was derailed multiple times by season-ending injuries, some of which earned him a medical redshirt from the NCAA, and all players who participated in college athletics in 2020 got another year of eligibility because of the pandemic.

Mccormick spent the first seven of his college seasons at Oregon, transferred to Miami for the 2023 season and will keep playing in 2024.

East Tennessee State said former linebacker Jared Folks was the NCAA’S first eighth-year player when he played for the Bucs in 2021. There have been multiple athletes with seven years of college eligibility, including Isis Young — a women’s basketball player who appeared for Florida, Fordham, Syracuse and Siena over seven seasons and decided against getting an eighth year.

But Mccormick — who has undergone at least six surgeries because of football injuries — seems to be the first with nine, and certainly the first at the major college football level.

Canadian pole vault champion dies

Shawn Barber, the Canadian pole vault record holder and 2015 world champion, has died from medical complications. Barber, 29, died Wednesday at home in Kingwood, Texas, his agent, Paul Doyle, confirmed. A cause of death was not yet known. Barber had been experiencing health issues.

Barber set the Canadian record of 19 feet, 8 ¼ inches while competing in Reno in 2016. While at the University of Akron, Barber won consecutive NCAA indoor championships in 2014 and 2015, and the NCAA Outdoor title in 2015. He won the gold medal that year at the Pan-am Games, and gold again that summer at the World Championships. A year later, Barber made the final at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

■ Tonight’s NBA game between Dallas and Golden State in San Francisco has been postponed following the death of Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojevic earlier this week. Wednesday’s Warriors game at Utah was also postponed. Make-up dates have not been set.

■ Combat sports legend Cris Cyborg, 38, will face undefeated Kelsey Wickstrum in a scheduled six-round 154-pound boxing matach tonight at Pechanga Resort Casino in Temecula.