Australian Open Marked By Long Matches & Delays

The 2024 Australian Open is in full swing kicking off this year’s tennis season, but scheduling issues have caused many delays in the tournament. Some matches have taken more than four hours and have been regularly played past 4 a.m. local time.

Women’s tennis plays at most three sets and men play at most five, but with no time clock in the game, there is no true timetable to know how long a match will take. Matches could last less than two hours if a player wins the two or three sets needed, but in the range of four to five hours if it’s an even matchup. If one goes late, it forces a delayed start for the next, and the next, a chain reaction that lasts the whole day.

American Ben Shelton was set to play a match in the opening rounds that was pushed back about four hours due to previous delays. With an official start time just after 2 a.m. EST, a majority of his American fans were already asleep. Daniil Medvedev played a match that lasted just about four and a half hours, ending after 3:30 a.m., but it was only the third latest-ending match in tournament history.

It is easy to see the struggle for a fan trying to watch the tournament, and players also seem to find the delays as detrimental. Even when one match ends, the other isn’t able to start up right away, with players needing to warm up and get ready after waiting in the locker room for hours before.

“If we’re going to be honest with ourselves, what are people looking for? They’re not looking for five-hour matches. … I haven’t been able to sit through one,” the 2012 and 2013 tournament winner Victoria Azarenka said. “It’s just too long.”

In order to curve the amount of tennis being played so late at night, the WTA and ATP are beginning to institute new rules for the tournaments they oversee with new recommended start times. Though it is impossible to know how long a tennis match will take, perhaps better foresight and planning in the future with extra time in case a match goes on.

“It’s a very obvious thing that needs to change. I haven’t heard anyone really disagree with that,” three-time Grand Slam winner Andy Murray said after a match in last year’s Australian Open. “Just probably looks a wee bit more professional if you’re not finishing at 3, or 4 in the morning.”

Despite the delays, the Australian Open and the sport of tennis are still seeing extreme levels of popularity. The tournament is expecting a record-setting more than a million total visitors throughout its two-week span, highlighted with 100,000 fans visiting on its first Saturday.

The growing popularity of tennis has also come due to the help of Netflix’s Break Point series, which follows and documents the journey of various players on the professional tour over the course of the season. The show follows models made by Drive to Survive and Quarterback, giving audiences a more personal view of the athletes they see on their TVs.

The Australian Open is the first of the four major tennis tournaments of the year, followed by the French Open in June, Wimbledon in July and the U.S. Open in September. It is set to end on January 26. with the women’s final and January 27 with the men’s final. Notable players remaining in the tournament are Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev for the men, and Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka on the women’s side.