Tuesday night’s quarter-final match between Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz had everything a US Open spectacle could ask for: huge stakes, knife-edge drama, top-shelf competition and an American hero who comes through in the end. The only fault to find was really the matter of time. The first ball wasn’t struck until 11.05 in the evening, and Shelton’s clinching ace didn’t come until 3.33 in the morning – marking, after a total of 4hr 28min on court, the latest-ending US Open match by a whopping 43 minutes.
Somewhat predictably, the discourse among media and fans following the late-night match has swiftly moved on from the USTA’s misadventures in scheduling to a referendum on the five-set match and whether it should be put out to pasture. For the record: that would be a colossal unforced error. Five-setters aren’t just intrinsic to the grand slam canon.
They are a badge of honor in the men’s game, confirmation that a player can and did indeed hack it in the big leagues. John Isner may not have won a major during his time on tour. But his capacity for grinding out marathon matches – not least the three-day, 11-hour epic he played against Nicholas Mahut at Wimbledon in 2010 – is why he remains highly respected by peers and fans alike.
Best-of-five is the exclusive framing device for the best matches in history and an imprimatur of the sport’s most revered champions. (See, The Greatest Match Ever Played or last year’s French Open final.) Even the losers are celebrated merely for having survived and played on to become part of the tale. That holds true as much for the men who play as their spectators. Much of what makes the experience of following tennis so affirming is the global group-watch sessions that take over social media anytime an Australian Open match goes the distance.
Viewers who can’t babysit the full marathon into the night – lest they risk sleeping through their morning alarms or, worse, cheering the exciting points too boisterously and rousing their house and neighbors – get to wake up and find the fifth set still raging as they’re getting ready for work the next day. A skeptic might point to the Australian Open, perhaps more so than any other slam, as a prime reason to abolish the five-setter. But true tennis nerds see the Happy Slam for what it is: a rite of passage.
In fact, if they don’t seem surprised by the US Open’s Melbourne hours, it’s because Craig Tiley, formerly the CEO of Tennis Australia, is now running the USTA. Still, for all the honor and valor there is to be extracted from five-setters, especially as they pile up, there’s no denying the matches exact a physical toll from players that has become harder to ignore as the pressure to maintain a hectic touring calendar puts them at increasing risk of missing tournaments from wear and tear. That tension between tradition and evolution has animated an existential debate around five-setters that has been simmering for years.
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