Five-set matches are physically punishing, occasionally absurd and increasingly under threat. They also produce much of what makes grand slam tennis great<\/p>\n
Tuesday night\u2019s quarter-final match between Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> 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\u2019t struck until 11.05 in the evening, and Shelton\u2019s clinching ace didn\u2019t come until 3.33 in the morning \u2013 marking, after a total of 4hr 28min on court, the latest-ending US Open match by a whopping 43 minutes.<\/p>\n Somewhat predictably, the discourse among media and fans following the late-night match has swiftly moved on from the USTA\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five-set matches are physically punishing, occasionally absurd and increasingly under threat. They also produce much of what makes grand slam tennis great Tuesday night\u2019s 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}