DOUBLE GRAND SLAM winner Garbine Muguruza triumphed in the latest women’s match ever held at the Australian Open after defeating Johanna Konta at the wee hour of 3:12 AM.
Muguruza and Konta’s match on Margaret Court Arena did not start until 12:30 am and finished with a 6-4, 6-7 (3/7), 7-5 victory for the Spaniard two hours and 42 minutes.
The start was delayed when the men’s match between Alexander Zverev and Jeremy Chardy turned into three hour 46-minute epic, ending 7-6 (7/5), 6-4, 5-7, 6-7 (6/8), 6-1 for Germany’s Zverev.
“I’ll go get some breakfast now,” Muguruza joked after wrapping up the win to set up a third-round clash with Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland.
The previous record for the latest start was set last year when a second-round match between Daria Gavrilova and Elise Mertens began at 11:59 pm.
The latest end to a match at any Grand Slam was also at Melbourne Park in 2008, when Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis finished a five-setter at 4:34 am.
Despite the hour, both Muguruza and Konta made a contest of their late-night encounter, which was watched live by only a few die-hard spectators.
Muguruza, seeded 18, took the first set as she seeks to recapture the form that propelled her to the world number one ranking and delivered a French Open title in 2016 and Wimbledon a year later.
Former world number four Konta, a semi-finalist Down Under in 2016, won the second in a tie-break after Muguruza squandered two break points.
The Spaniard made no mistake in the third, breaking the British hope late in the set to avoid another tie-break.
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