Dan Evans secured perhaps the greatest win of his life with an epic five-set triumph over 23rd seed Karen Khachanov at the US Open.

British hope Evans, who’s endured a miserable 2024, fought back from 4-0 (15-40) down in the deciding set to claim an improbable 6-7 7-6 7-6 4-6 6-4 win on Court 6.

Evans fought off cramp and could barely walk at the end of his match, which broke US Open record for longest ever at five hours and 35 minutes.

“I just tried to keep fighting. At 4-0 I thought I was out, felt a little sorry for myself,” Evans said on court immediately afterwards as the tiredness began to set in.

“I was trying to get myself going, and I didn’t want to go out of a Slam with a whimper after how long the match went on and I could see he was struggling a bit.

“I just tried to grab a game at a time… I’ve just got a bad headache now and gotta get rid of that!”

“It was a hell of a match and I just want to go to bed!” Evans added.

The previous record for longest match was Stefan Edberg’s clash with Michael Chang in 1992, which lasted five hours and 26 minutes.

“It was amazing. At 4-2 I really started to get going,” Evans added.

“The crowd sort of sensed it, I don’t know how many British people are here but it seemed like the whole place wanted me to win – I don’t think that’s ever happened before.

“It really helped because he felt them and then I actually played pretty good, great last point and here we are.”

Next up for Evans is a second-round showdown with Argentine Mariano Navone.

3

The 34-year-old is adamant he wants to avoid a repeat of the epic battle Flushing witnessed as he reflected on the craziness of the match in the press conference.

The match point was the 392nd point of the contest and ended with a 22-shot rally when the Russian hit his backhand into the net.

“It’s one I’ll remember obviously forever. It was sort of who could last the longest in the end. I was hurting all over really.

“It’s the longest I’ve ever been on a court. I don’t think I’ve played that long, five hours, in a day ever in two sessions, never mind in one!. I was actually thinking that on the court. I’ve never practised for two hours, two hours. It’s normally an hour and a half.

“In the fourth set I had to check the set to see what set we were in. I wasn’t entirely sure what set we were in.

“I was trying to stay out there as long as possible at love-four and just see where I could get myself. But, yeah, I don’t really want to do that again. That’s for sure.”

It was a welcome relief for the Brummie, who had lost his ten previous tour-level matches stretching back to Miami in March. He had also dropped from 58th in the world to 169th when sacrificing his ranking by playing the Olympics with Andy Murray instead of defending the 500 ranking points he earned by winning the Citi Open in Washington DC last year.

3

It’s been a good day for the Britons on Tuesday with British no.1 Jack Draper making it safely through to the second round with a win over Zhang Zhizhen.

Meanwhile, women’s British no.1 Katie Boulter advanced to the second round with a triumph in three sets over Aliaksandra Sasnovich.

Emma Raducanu, who won the US Open women’s singles title in 2021, crashed out in round one against American Sofia Kenin and the pain was there to see in her press conference.