Medvedev’s Aussie win finishes at 3:39 a.m.
If he wasn’t on the court competing, Daniil Medvedev doubted anything would have kept him at Rod Laver Arena until almost 4 in the morning.
The third-seeded Medvedev lost the first two sets of his second-round Australian Open match against No. 53-ranked Emil Ruusuvuori before coming back to win 3-6, 6-7 (1), 6-4, 7-6 (1), 6-0 in 4 hours, 23 minutes in the latest finish of the week.
They’d walked onto Rod Laver Arena to start hitting at 11:07 p.m. Thursday after women’s No. 3 Elena Rybakina lost the longest tiebreaker ever in a women’s Grand Slam event, 22-20 to Anna Blinkova.
The match ended at 3:39 a.m. Friday, and Medvedev was still there signing autographs as the clock ticked closer to 4.
The long tiebreaker and the uncertainty over the starting time, he said, meant his eating and warming up routines were thrown out of kilter.
“When I went on court I was a little exhausted already,” Medvedev, a two-time Australian Open finalist, explained to the scattering of fans still in the arena well after the last trams had finished running for Day 5.
It won’t go down as a classic, but still had plenty of drama.
Medvedev needed a medical timeout for blisters on his right foot after the second set, and he spiked his racket into the court after missing a chance to break Ruusuvuori’s serve late in the fourth.
Then he had trouble tying the laces of his right shoe right before the deciding fifth set.
Looking at the clock, he was frank with the people who’d stayed there until a couple of hours before the sun was due to rise.
“Honestly guys, I would not be here,” Medvedev said in an on-court interview. “Thanks for staying. If I would be a tennis fan and I would come, at 1 a.m. I would be like ‘OK, let’s go home. We’re going to catch the end of the match on the TV.’”
It was the latest finish so far this year, but not close to the tournament record. Andy Murray finished off Thanasi Kokkinakis just after 4 a.m. last year in a second-round match that lasted 5 hours, 45 minutes.
And that was only good enough for second place on the all-time list. The latest-finishing match in Grand Slam history ended with Lleyton Hewitt beating Marcos Baghdatis at 4:34 a.m. in 2008.
After player complaints last year, Australian Open organizers decided to extend the tournament by adding a 15th day and starting on a Sunday for the first time.
The first round was split over three days, and no matches went past 2 a.m.
But the first day of the second round was entirely different story, with two early men’s matches going to a decisive tiebreaker after five sets and top-ranked Iga Swiatek’s opener against Danielle Collins going for almost 3 ¼ hours.
And so Day 5 of the Australian Open finished on a Friday, anyway.
Medvedev said he’d have to warm down, get some physiotherapy and try to get to sleep by 6:30 a.m. and wake up some time after midday to start preparing for his third-round match against Felix Auger-Aliassime.
‘FREE PALESTINE’ CHANTS
Chants of “free, free Palestine” rang out again from the crowd during the Palestinian soccer team’s game against United Arab Emirates at the Asian Cup on Thursday.
Similar chants were made at the Palestinian team’s game against Iran on Sunday.
Just as for that game, a moment’s silence was held before kickoff for the lives lost as a result of the “ongoing situation in Palestine.” Loud chanting had already rung out around Al Janoub Stadium before the two teams lined up in the center to observe the silence, and it started again shortly after.
Earlier, the Palestinian players applauded fans following the playing of the national anthem and then held a team huddle on the field.
Chants could be heard again after the Group C game kicked off.
PLAYER LET GO OVER POSTS
Turkey’s leading soccer club Basaksehir announced Thursday it has parted ways with its Israeli player Eden Karzev following a disciplinary probe of his social media post calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza by the Hamas militant group.
The club’s decision came days after another Israeli player, Sagiv Jehezkel, was briefly detained in Turkey and questioned for allegedly inciting hatred after he expressed solidarity with the hostages after scoring an equalizer during a top-division game.
The Antalyaspor winger returned to a cheering crowd in Israel on Monday from the Turkish coastal city of Antalya where he played.
Karzev was also briefly questioned by police in Istanbul after he re-posted a message on social media that marked the hostages’ 100 days in captivity with the hashtag “BringThemHomeNow.”
VINCENT’S BIG DONATION
Former baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent is making a multimillion dollar donation to Yale to endow the baseball coach’s position there in the name of his father.
Francis T. Vincent Jr. was baseball commissioner from 1989-92 and is a 1963 graduate of Yale Law School. His father, Francis T. Vincent, was a 1931 graduate of Yale who captained the football and baseball teams.
Vincent’s father played baseball at Yale under coach Smoky Joe Wood, who went 3-1 as the Boston Red Sox won the 1912 World Series. He became an official of high school, college and NFL games.
“I wanted to do something that would mean something to him and tie him to Yale baseball, which he loved, also to Yale, because I think his prominence at Yale had something to do with my being so very interested in sports,” Vincent said ahead of Thursday’s announcement. “I was never the player he was, but I certainly enjoyed playing.”