No. 10 of '23: At 4:15AM, Andy Murray finishes off Kokkinakis in heroic Australian Open recovery

Tennis Channel will re-air this match on December 5 at 7PM ET.

The 2023 men’s Grand Slam season would belong, as usual, to Novak Djokovic. But it was his old rival, Andy Murray, who owned its opening three days. And nights. And mornings.

Murray kicked off the Australian Open by beating Matteo Berrettini, nine years his junior, in a fifth-set match tiebreaker. It was an epic win, but it also seemed to doom his chances of going much farther in Melbourne. To no one’s surprise, the 35-year-old lost the first two sets of his next match, to Australia’s Thanasi Kokkinakis, 6-4, 7-6 (4), and went down a break in the third.

The time was already past midnight, but it turned out Murray was just waking up.

When Kokkinakis served for the match at 5-3, it looked like he had weathered everything he was going to have to weather. That included a few runs of vintage Murray brilliance, and Kokkinakis’s own meltdown after a time violation. Each time, the Aussie had reestablished control with his serve and forehand. He would fire 102 winners on the night, 33 more than Murray.

The only problem was, he needed one more.

At 5-3, 30-30, Kokkinakis missed a forehand long. It was one little mistake, but it opened a door, and Murray walked through it with a forehand winner to break. The same pattern played out in the third-set tiebreaker. At 4-4, Kokkinakis missed a forehand long, and Murray took advantage by cracking a service winner to reach set point.

Finally, at 5-6, Kokkinakis snapped. Gifted the simplest of forehand volleys, he flubbed it five feet wide. It was clear that he wasn’t ready to win this match. Two sets and two hours later, that fact hadn’t changed.

In the fifth set, the two men traded nine holds. Once again, with Murray serving at 4-5, Kokkinakis put himself two points from victory. Once again, that was as far as he got. Up 15-30, he missed one forehand wide, and another long, and Murray escaped.

From there, Kokkinakis tired, while the man with the metal hip marched on. Murray hit an inside-out forehand winner to break for 6-5, and rifled one more backhand winner to hold for the victory.

At five hours and 45 minutes, the match was the longest of Murray’s long career. He hit his forehand as cleanly, and constructed his rallies as brilliantly, as he ever had. He was 43 of 51 at net.

Just as incredibly, Murray’s final winner came at 4:15 A.M., making this the second-latest finish in Grand Slam history. Not everybody was thrilled about that fact, including Murray, who would play and lose to Roberto Bautista Agut the following day. There would be calls in 2023 to eliminate late finishes like this, and that’s probably the fair thing to do. But there’s no question that, in the moment, they heighten the drama of any contest.

“There was frustration in there. There was tension. There was excitement, all of that,” Murray said during a semi-delirious post-match interview.

Asked how he had survived, Murray started to talk about how the match had its ups and downs, how he played better as it went on, etc. Then the old warrior stopped and cut to the chase:

“I have a big heart.”