A tennis match for the history books

Only a week ago, Laura Siegemund played the longest tennis match at tour level in 13 years – but the record for this decade only lasted a short time.

On Thursday, the Spaniard Sara Sorribes Tormo and the Chinese Gao Xinyu fought a duel at the China Open in Beijing that lasted 4 hours and 15 minutes – six minutes longer than Siegemund needed for her victory.

In the end, the favored Spaniard narrowly won 6:7 (4:7), 7:5 and 7:5. In the Open Era (since 1968) it is the fourth longest WTA match in history. Outside of Grand Slams, only one match was ever longer for the women.

This was the incredible record match in 1984 between Vicki Nelson and Jean Hepner (6:4, 7:6), which lasted 6:31(!) hours. The tiebreak alone lasted over an hour and 47 minutes and included 643 strokes, the longest rally in tennis history.

Sorribes Tormo’s style of play is known for long, hard matches, so duels lasting over three hours are not uncommon. Big deficits and leads often mean little to her.

In this match, Sorribes Tormo was already leading 4:1 in the second set and even 5:1 in the deciding set, before they had to struggle again both times at 5:5 – but in the end it was still enough for the 27-year-old.

Both players had some problems with their own serves, so there were a total of 32 break chances and 14 breaks in the match.