US Open's Late-Night Drama: Zverev, Shelton, and the Cost of Midnight Matches
New York likes to call itself the city that never sleeps. This year’s US Open is doing its best to prove it.
Night sessions have bled into the small hours, matches have ended with dawn on the horizon, and players chasing Grand Slam glory are stumbling back to their hotels just as Manhattan is pouring its first coffee. The spectacle is wild. The questions about fairness are louder.
Zverev’s midnight marathon
No one still standing in the men’s draw has lived the late shift quite like Alexander Zverev.
The top seed has played five matches at Flushing Meadows. Three of them have finished after 1am. On more than one occasion, he has not gone to bed until after 5am.
"I've been to bed as late as 6:45am in the past week so I'm kind of a bit jet-lagged," Zverev said. "I feel like I'm playing the Australian Open in New York right now."
That is not just a throwaway line. It is the reality of a player trying to manage a Grand Slam schedule that has pushed his body clock halfway across the world.
Friday’s semi-final against Karen Khachanov – scheduled not before 15:00 local time (20:00 BST) – will be the first time Zverev has seen daytime tennis at this US Open. For the first time in two weeks, he will walk onto the court under the sun rather than the stadium lights.
Across the net, Khachanov arrives with a very different rhythm. Unseeded, but unburdened by the graveyard shift, the Russian has not been kept on court beyond midnight once. His quarter-final win over Alexander Blockx wrapped up shortly before 19:00 on Wednesday. Dinner, recovery, sleep. A normal sporting life.
The contrast is stark. One semi-finalist has spent this fortnight chasing rest. The other has had it.
Shelton and Tiafoe on the graveyard shift
On the other half of the draw, the American story has been written in the dead of night.
Ben Shelton’s quarter-final win over Carlos Alcaraz did not end until 3:34am on Wednesday, the latest finish in US Open history. The crowd stayed, the noise stayed, the adrenaline stayed. Sleep did not.
Shelton now faces fellow American Frances Tiafoe in Friday’s night session (19:00 local time/00:00 BST, Saturday). The build-up is electric. The preparation is anything but equal.
Tiafoe wrapped up his own quarter-final – a five-set battle with US compatriot Alex Michelsen – at around 19:00 on Tuesday. He had his evening, his meal, his ice bath, his full night’s sleep. Shelton had the record books and a body clock that needed two days to remember what normal felt like.
Shelton insists he will be “all right” after those two days off court. He will need them.
Matt Little, Andy Murray’s long-time former strength and conditioning coach, has seen the cost of these nights before.
"The advantage of the opponent who has played earlier in the day will be big - they've had that full evening's rest and a good night's sleep," he told BBC Sport. "We can all relate to it - if you have one really bad night's sleep, you have the knock-on effect of that for the coming days."
For Shelton, Little is clear: "He'll have to be napping to catch up some sleep. On the nutritional side, he'll be making sure he gets as many carbs and as much protein as he can in for that next match, and trying to get back to a bit of a routine.
"It's about making sure you can optimise the hydration and get as much sleep as possible without completely going into a full slumber."
In other words: patchwork recovery, in a sport that usually demands precision.
A familiar problem, a louder chorus
Tennis has been here before. It did not like what it saw.
At the 2023 Australian Open, Andy Murray’s epic win over Thanasi Kokkinakis ended at 4am, the second-latest finish in Grand Slam history. Murray managed only three hours’ sleep before returning to Melbourne Park around 11am. He later called the situation a "farce". Few argued.
Tournament organisers listened, at least partially. The Australian Open cut the number of day-session matches on its main courts from three to two, trying to stop night sessions from drifting into the morning.
The tours moved too. In early 2024, the ATP and WTA introduced rules preventing regular tour matches – best-of-three, not best-of-five like at the Slams – from starting after 23:00. Grand Slams, though, sit outside those rules. New York can still go as late as it dares.
This fortnight, it has pushed the limits again.
Venus Williams and Sofia Kenin began their first-round match at 12:13am, the latest start in US Open history. Across the first seven nights, three matches finished after 2am, three more after 1am. Then came Shelton and Alcaraz, and the clock ticked past 3:30am.
Martina Navratilova, an 18-time Grand Slam singles champion, did not mince her words.
"Something has got to give," she said. "This is not OK and it is not normal."
Her verdict hangs over this tournament. The romance of late-night New York tennis is real. So is the toll.
The New York myth and the reality
Ask some fans, and they will tell you these nights are the essence of the US Open. The music, the noise, the beer cups, the roars that echo down the subway steps as the last trains roll out of Queens. Arthur Ashe Stadium under lights has a particular magic. Players talk about it. They crave it.
But this year, the volume of early-morning finishes has crept higher. Tuesday’s programme, which finally ended at 3:34am on Wednesday, was the product of a packed schedule and three full-distance quarter-finals on Ashe: Aryna Sabalenka beating Linda Noskova, Jessica Pegula overcoming Emma Navarro, with Tiafoe’s win wedged between them. Every match went long. Every delay rippled forward.
By the time Shelton and Alcaraz walked on, the night was already fraying. By the time they shook hands, it was history.
The US Open leans into its identity as the sport’s late-night show. This year, that identity is colliding with performance science, player welfare, and the basic idea of a level playing field.
Zverev, Shelton, Khachanov, Tiafoe – they will all walk out again chasing a place in the final. The question is not whether they will deliver drama. They always do.
The question is how long tennis can keep asking its stars to perform their biggest acts while the rest of the city is finally thinking about sleep.
