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0 Andy Murray and Thanasi Kokkinakis played deep into the night at the Australian Open, facing down exhaustion and each other for five hours and 45 minutes in a second-round match until Murray emerged with a 4-6, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-5 victory that ended at 4.05am.
They began playing on Thursday and finished on Friday at Margaret Court Arena in the chill of a temperature that dipped below 15 degrees Celsius and before hundreds of enthusiastic spectators.
The match is eclipsed in length by only one other at Melbourne Park — the 2012 Australian Open final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, which lasted five hours and 53 minutes.
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Those who remained in the seats waved flags and cheered raucously throughout, delighted by the extreme effort and high quality of play displayed by both men. No matter who folks were cheering for, they were sure to leave with a great story to tell.
“Simply beyond belief,” Sam Smith said in commentary.
“Here he is back and just doing extraordinary things on a tennis court.”
How tight was this? Murray won 196 points, Kokkinakis 192. And they combined for 171 winners to only 107 unforced errors.
It was the second consecutive five-setter this week for three-time singles major champion Murray, a 35-year-old from Britain with an artificial hip who eliminated No.13 seed Matteo Berrettini on Tuesday night.
Kokkinakis is a 26-year-old from Australia who is ranked 159th and has never been past the third round at a singles grand slam tournament.
Somehow, this was not the latest finish in Australian Open history. A 2008 match at the tournament between Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis concluded at 4.34am, the record for any slam.
Kokkinakis could have closed out the proceedings far earlier, having taken the opening two sets and been up a break in the third.
But serving at 2-0, 40 all, he was cited by the chair umpire for taking too much time before a serve and let it get to him.
First Kokkinakis lost the argument, then he lost his focus, getting broken there and destroying his racket by spiking it on the court.
Still, he served for the match at 5-3 in that set, and came within two points of victory, before Murray pulled it out when Kokkinakis flubbed a volley to cede the eventual tiebreaker.
In the fourth, Murray was the aggressor and never seemed sapped of energy, at one point waving his arms and even doing jumping jacks to fire up his supporters. His mother, Judy, repeatedly rose to her feet to clap and yell. His coach, Ivan Lendl, did not, sticking in his seat.
Murray’s impenetrable defence comes up trumps
When Murray delivered a second-serve ace at 2.59am, more than four-and-a-half hours into the proceedings, he owned the fourth set and forced a fifth.
That last set was, appropriately, even as can be for 10 games. There were zero breaks of serve until Murray finally converted his eighth chance of that set with a forehand winner to lead 6-5. He strutted to the sideline, shaking his neon-colored racket.
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All that was left to do was serve it out, and Murray managed to do just that, wrapping it up with a backhand winner.
After meeting Kokkinakis at the net for an embrace, Murray screamed.
“It was unbelievable that I managed to turn that around,” Murray said in his on-court interview.
“Thanasi was playing … serving unbelievable, hitting his forehand huge, and I don’t know how I managed to get through it.
“I did start playing better as the match went on, and yeah, I have a big heart.”
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