Alexander Zverev needed four hours and 53 minutes to get past Lorenzo Sonego, winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(7), 7-5, 6-4 after standing two points from defeat in the third-set tie-break.
"I'm just happy I won, that's it. I'm happy that I won this battle," Zverev said afterwards. The German, the French Open champion and Wimbledon finalist this year, inherited the top seeding when Jannik Sinner withdrew from the tournament, and this was the first evidence of what that seeding is worth on a bad night. He plays Quentin Halys next.
A note from our side, not from the reporting: matches of this length are where equipment stops being a detail. A polyester string bed loses tension fastest in its first hour and keeps drifting after that, which is why tour players carry frames strung a kilo apart and change racquets on a ball count rather than on feel — a habit worth borrowing long before anyone plays a five-setter.
Summarised by TennisArena from reporting by Al Jazeera and The Sunday Guardian.