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Grand Slam tennis crossed a new frontier early Sunday when Lleyton Hewitt and Marcos Baghdatis took until 4:34 in the morning to complete their third-round match at the Australian Open.

Hewitt prevailed 4-6, 7-5, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-3 in 4 hours 45 minutes.

A perfect storm of long day-session matches in rainy Melbourne, with the Rod Laver Arena retractable roof closed, tilted into scheduling mayhem when Roger Federer began playing Janko Tipsarevic at 4:47 p.m.

“I looked at the schedule,” referee Wayne McKewen said, “and I would never have picked Federer to go four hours and 27 minutes.”

The great Swiss was slightly off his game and Tipsarevic played the match of his life before it finally ended – 6-7 (5), 7-6 (1), 5-7, 6-1, 10-8 for Federer at 9:14 p.m., almost two hours past the 7:30 p.m. night session start.

With Venus Williams against Sania Mirza and Hewitt-Baghdatis to follow, McKewen and tournament director Craig Tiley considered their options.

As Federer's match went deeper into the tiebreakerless final set, they asked Williams and Mirza to move to the retractable-roof Vodafone Arena.

“Both of us didn't want to,” Williams said of the proposal. “We wanted the schedule to go as planned.” Meanwhile, a communication mix-up led Hewitt and Baghdatis to believe they would be on after Federer because the women were moving.

Matters were further clouded by the Tomas Berdych-Juan Monaco match, still on in the Vodafone and not over until 10:50 p.m.

Tiley juggled a host of factors including the players, security concerns, the public, ticket holders as well as domestic and international broadcasters.

“Our decisions are always made as a matrix of all those variables,” he said.

Williams and Mirza got on court at 10 p.m. and Williams won 7-6 (0), 6-4 at 11:32 p.m. Had it gone three sets, Hewitt and Baghdatis had been told their match would be put off until the next day.

Novak Djokovic, awaiting the winner, was already through to Monday's round of 16.

“I don't really think Marcos and I knew what was better,” Hewitt later said after getting to the interview room at 5:30 a.m. “It was funny, because we both said, ‘We could be here at 4 or 5 in the morning,' and here we are.” Asked when he would go to bed, he said: “Who knows? Mia [his two-year-old daughter] will be up ready to play, probably.”

Whether Hewitt and Baghdatis should have gone on court to start at 11:47 p.m. was a hotly debated issue. One school of thought was that it was a Saturday night and since the players were willing and the crowd was there, why not? Another was represented by a veteran player agent who said: “They're inexperienced [Tiley is in his second year and McKewen his third]. The mistake they made was giving the women a choice. What did they think Venus would say? You tell them they're moving to Vodafone, and if they don't like it, call 1-800-Qantas and go home.”

The matches created interest worldwide and were carried live on ESPN in the United States and Eurosport in Britain and France.

“The epic nature of the Hewitt-Baghdatis match was unbelievable,” Tiley said. “We received texts and notes from around the world just loving the tennis.”

As for general reaction, he claimed: “I can define it by a phone call this morning from someone driving to Bendigo [a provincial city] at 6 a.m. after they said they had the best day of their lives, with a day ticket and a night ticket.” With beer still flowing in the concessions and 3,000 spectators in the 15,000-seat arena still there at the end, it was a night to remember.

Proof that tennis scheduling is an imperfect art: After Hewitt-Baghdatis went 4 hours 45 minutes on Saturday night, on Sunday Rafael Nadal and Paul-Henri Mathieu were on court for all of 50 minutes, with Mathieu retiring with a calf injury and trailing 6-4, 3-0.

How did host broadcaster Channel Seven handle the programming shortfall? It filled with a replay of the previous day's Hewitt-Baghdatis night match – from earlier that same morning. Special to The Globe and Mail