Night tennis is one of the hallmarks of the US Open. The tournament began staging evening matches in 1975, but they weren’t an immediate hit. Fewer than 5,000 fans attended the inaugural night match, which turned out to be a major upset by Onny Parun over 1971 men’s champion Stan Smith in straight sets. The next evening, Chris Evert recorded the first night win by a woman at the US Open when she topped Lesley Hunt. But the crowd was once again sparse.
It wasn’t until the end of the tournament that matches played at night finally took hold. A remarkable comeback by Manuel Orantes against Guillermo Vilas in the semifinals turned the key. Down two sets to one and 0-5 in the fourth set, Orantes saved five match points and fought all the way back to a 4-6, 1-6, 6-2, 7-5, 6-4 victory (which he followed up the next day by defeating Jimmy Connors for the title). The semifinal ended at 10:28 p.m. and wasn’t scheduled as a night match—a long day of tennis pushed their match to a late start and caused it to be played under the lights. Yet nearly all of the fans chose to remain in the stadium through the evening—and were rewarded with witnessing one of the US Open’s greatest matches ever played. Night tennis was here to stay.
Below:The semifinal match between Manuel Orantes and Guillermo Vilas in 1975, when the US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to stage matches at night.
Since then, matches have sometimes finished past 2 a.m. But no women’s matches had ever finished that late until this year’s fourth-round contest between No. 6 seed Bianca Andreescu and No. 17 seed Maria Sakkari, which began on Monday evening and reached its conclusion on Tuesday morning. Sakkari needed to win a second-set tiebreak to stay in the match and then pulled away at 3-all in the third set for a 6-7, 7-6, 6-3 victory. She secured the final point with a short lob that Andreescu was unable to handle, ending their three-hour-and-30-minute battle at 2:13 a.m. The late finish eclipsed the previous record, set by Madison Keys and Alison Riske in 2016, by nearly half an hour. Keys won that match, 4-6, 7-6, 6-2, at 1:48 a.m.
Sakkari started off her post-match press conference by saying to the media, “Sorry for keeping you late. I really tried to not keep you that late, but I failed.”
Sakkari looks to continue what has become her most successful US Open ever when she faces No. 4 seed Karolina Pliskova in the quarterfinals on Wednesday. She reached the first major semifinal of her career at Roland Garros and now has the opportunity to advance to her second Grand Slam semifinal of the year.
The showdown between Sakkari and Andreescu was a minute shy of the latest-finishing match of the 2021 US Open. When Frances Tiafoe needed five rounds to outlast No. 5 seed Andrey Rublev in the third round, their three-hour-and-45-minute slugfest ended on Saturday morning at 2:14 a.m.
Here are the latest finished of matches since night tennis began at the US Open.
Finish / Date Result / Round
2:26 a.m. / Sept. 1, 2014 Kei Nishikori d. Milos Raonic / 4R
2:26 a.m. / Sept. 2, 2012 Philipp Kohlschreiber d. John Isner / 3R
2:26 a.m. / Sept. 4, 1993 Mats Wilander d. Mikael Pernfors / 2R
2:22 a.m. / Sept. 1, 2018 Marin Cilic d. Alex de Minaur / 3R
2:14 a.m. / Sept. 3, 2021 Frances Tiafoe d. Andrey Rublev / 3R
2:14 a.m. / Sept. 3, 2002 Younes El Aynaoui d. Wayne Ferreira / 4R
2:13 a.m. / Sept. 6, 2021 Maria Sakkari d. Bianca Andreescu / 4R
2:11 a.m. / Sept. 3, 2008 Rafael Nadal d. Mardy Fish / QF
2:03 a.m. / Sept. 9, 2018 Rafael Nadal d. Dominic Thiem / QF
