Francesca Schiavone (picture ©Louis Tan) won her eighth final (or Last 16 round if you prefer) at the Australian Open defeating Russian player Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4 1-6 16-14 after nearly five hours of intense battle. This is the longest women match in a Grand Slam tournament during the Open era.

The third set lasted three hours, more than most women’s matches. The final set was nearly over for Francesca when Kuznetsova managed to break her serve taking a 4-2 lead but Schiavone managed to break her back immediately and go 4-4.

The set goes on for a long time with the players keeping their serve and despite their fatigue the technical level is high and much better than many matches of normal length. On the court there are two great players who keep on playing very hard rallies and come to the net to take the point when they can.

Francesca is finally able to break her opponent’s serve and take a 10-9 lead. At that point, however, she isn’t aggressive enough when she serves for the match and she’s broken back.

The “exchange of favors” is repeated so there are two more consecutive breaks, the players go 11-11 and the serve rule seems to be restored for some more games.

On 14-14 Franscesca Schiavone once again breaks her opponent’s serve, goes to serve for the match starting again not being aggressive enough but on 0-30 perhaps she understands that it’s the moment to give everything and this time she succeds in ending this epic match winning 16-14 in the third set.

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The cold numbers don’t really say much about this match but they clearly describe how close it was. We aren’t at the levels of the marathon played in the last Wimbledon by John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, who in the fifth set went on for hours with short rallies and many aces, but we’re talking about a great match under a technical and agonistic point of view worthy of entering immediately in tennis legend.