Five-set tennis is under attack. Killing it would be a colossal unforced error | Andrew Lawrence
The record-breaking late-night US Open match between Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz has reignited debate over the future of five-set tennis. While some officials propose shortening the format to reduce player fatigue, the author argues that abolishing five-set matches would be a significant mistake. The article contends that these marathons are essential to the sport's tradition, serving as a badge of honor and a source of global spectacle.
- ▪Ben Shelton defeated Carlos Alcaraz in a US Open quarter-final that ended at 3:33 am, marking the latest-finishing match in tournament history.
- ▪Incoming Tennis Australia CEO Andrew Abdo has suggested modifying the game format, potentially eliminating best-of-five sets to address player welfare concerns.
- ▪The author argues that five-set matches are a crucial tradition that defines grand slam prestige and creates memorable sporting narratives.
- ▪John Isner and Nicolas Mahut's 11-hour match at Wimbledon in 2010 is cited as an example of how five-setters elevate players' reputations regardless of the outcome.
The Guardian — US files mainly under news. We currently carry 711 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | The Guardian — US |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/sep/11/us-open-five-set-tennis-shelton-alcaraz-late-night-matches |
| Publication time | Fri, 11 Sep 2026 08:00:05 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-11T08:14:49.579Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-11T08:14:49.579Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | S9SeohoX3GDO · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
The clock inside Arthur Ashe Stadium shows 3.33am as Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz contest the latest-finishing match in US Open history. Photograph: Julian Finney/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenThe clock inside Arthur Ashe Stadium shows 3.33am as Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz contest the latest-finishing match in US Open history. Photograph: Julian Finney/Getty ImagesUS Open Tennis 2026Five-set tennis is under attack. Killing it would be a colossal unforced errorAndrew Lawrence at Flushing MeadowsFive-set matches are physically punishing, occasionally absurd and increasingly under threat.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Guardian — US.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from The Guardian — US
