Santoro puts his endurance on record

Tennis: Like two gladiators scything away at each other under blazing Parisian sun and 21 degrees, Arnaud Clement and Fabrice Santoro became the unlikely focus of curiosity. Inseparable in their first-round match for six hours and 33 minutes, the Frenchmen went into the books with a world record for the longest match ever recorded. It began on Monday and finished yesterday morning.

Santoro, falling to the ground at match point before weeping into his towel through the mists of exhaustion and relief, finally gathered himself enough to haul his bedraggled carcass off court and make way for Venus Williams.

The last set of the 6-4, 6-3, 6-7, 3-6, 16-14 match lasted 172 minutes, allowing the two to usurp the previous mark set in 1984.

In that remarkable contest between Vicki Nelson-Dunbar and Jean Hepner in a Virginia Slims tour game, the women slugged it out over six hours 31 minutes before Nelson-Dunbar won on a tie break.

In the 6-4, 7-6 (13-11) match, the tie break alone lasted one hour 47 minutes. One of their profoundly monotonous rallies continued for 29 minutes over 643 shots and gave the winner the dubious honour of being the only woman to win a two-set singles match which lasted over six hours.

The endurance duels, however, are not just the realm of the unheard-of player. In 1982 John McEnroe and Mats Wilander went at it for six hours and 22 minutes in a Davis Cup semi-final between the USA and Sweden in St Louis. The American finally prevailed 9-7, 6-2, 15-17, 3-6, 8-6.

"You need a lot of things. You need will. You need experience. You need to be very focused at the right moment in the match. You have to be brave. I think it takes a lot of courage and will," said Santoro after the match.

"I think it was a beautiful match. It was a great match on a great court in Paris with probably the best crowd ever for us.

"But quite aside from this record I'm happy to know that at the age I've reached, I can still play tennis for six hours and 33 minutes.

"Sometimes you're working, your training, you don't know where you're going really. But something like this shows all the work you've done backstage."

In a fitting counterpoint to the match, the game that preceded it on Suzanne-Lenglen court was the shortest so far in the men's singles draw. It took the world number one, Roger Federer, one hour and 15 minutes to sweep aside his opponent, Belgian qualifier Kristof Vliegen.

Santoro may have a world record, which is likely to work against him in this endurance tournament, but Federer has the look of a performer with all the equipment to win here.

So dominant was his play that Vliegen could only chuckle and shake his head when the two shook hands at the end of the match.

"I'm happy the way it started for me because I was not sure how well I was playing," said the Swiss virtuoso.

"It's a little bit of relief obviously after the last (two) years. There would be so much talk if I lost three times in the first round of the French Open."

Juan Carlos Ferrero overcame his rib injuries to beat Germany's Tommy Haas in four sets. Dropping the first 3-6, the reigning champion fired back three straight sets to win 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.

Australia's Lleyton Hewitt earned his second-round tie by beating the injured French hope Arnaud Pasquale in four sets.