Top 10 Stories from the 2017 Australian Open

10. The Second-Longest Match in Australian Open History

Ivo Karlovic has never been in the men’s top ten, but he has been a player whom no one ever wants to play, because he has one of the strongest serves of all time. It’s made him a bit more well-known than Horacio Zeballos, a 31-year-old Argentinean with one tour title in singles and a few more in doubles to his name, and has been in and out of the top 100.  But when Karlovic himself is approaching 40, he’s not as strong as he used to be.

When the two of them met in the first round, at first it looked like Karlovic wasn’t playing well enough to win that day. He got the first set to a tiebreak, but lost it. In the second set Zeballos managed to break his famous serve to go up two sets to love. But while his return game will never match his serve, Karlovic is hardly incapable of breaking serve himself, and he pulled out the third set before running away with the fourth.

Then came the final set. Neither broke. Six games all came and went. Ten games all came and went. So did fifteen. The crowd swelled as the rest of the day’s matches ended. Both men proved their mettle and serving ability in a war of attrition that ended up going on two hours and 41 minutes. Finally, at 21-20, Karlovic found a way to break and claim the match. By then the match clocked in at five hours and 14 minutes, second only to Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal’s 2012 near-six hour final.

“This one definitely I will remember forever,” Karlovic said afterwards. He even won a second match before going down in the third round.