Late nights at the US Open add a new wild wrinkle with 3:33 a.m. finish to Shelton-Alcaraz thriller

NEW YORK (AP) — The late-night action at the U.S. Open has now reached an extreme.

Ben Shelton’s five-set thriller to beat reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz in the quarterfinals ended at 3:33 a.m. Wednesday, leaving few people awake to see the 4 1/2-hour marathon reach its finale on one of the sport’s biggest stages. That only added to the list of early-morning finishes that had already stirred frustration and concerns about how organizers were managing the schedule at the Grand Slam event with numerous matches straying well past night-owl hours.

Players have long loved the electricity of playing night matches under the lights in the nation’s biggest city. But the tournament had already set a record with three post-2 a.m. finishes over the first six days, as well as having two other matches go past 1 a.m.

That had included Venus Williams being subjected to the latest start in U.S. Open history at 12:13 a.m., after it took 4 hours, 36 minutes for Novak Djokovic to get knocked out in the first round.

“It’s not ideal,” Williams said at the time.

Shelton himself had a four-set second-round win against Denis Shapovalov that ended at 2:07 a.m.

Then came Tuesday night — well, Wednesday morning.

Shelton, a 23-year-old from Atlanta seeded No. 8, earned a massive win in his young career to reach his third major semifinal by taking down the second-seeded Alcaraz 6-7 (5), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7). He closed the fifth-set tiebreak with a 146-mph ace and ended the reigning champion’s 18-match winning streak in Grand Slam tournaments.

It ended with Arthur Ashe Stadium perhaps one-third full at the finish.

This one set up an all-American semifinal matchup with 11th-seeded Frances Tiafoe, with the U.S. guaranteed to have a representative in Sunday’s final as it seeks its first major men’s title since Andy Roddick won at Flushing Meadows in 2003.

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