Carlos Alcaraz has called on tennis chiefs to end late matches at Grand Slams after his record-breaking US Open exit in the middle of the night. Alcaraz's reign as US Open champion was shattered by Ben Shelton in a five-set thriller that finished at 3.33am local time in New York. The quarter-final started on a Tuesday evening and finally came to a conclusion after four hours and 28 minutes on a Wednesday morning in the latest finish in US Open history. 

The cut-off for matches at Wimbledon is 11pm local time, but the US Open, French Open and Australian Open do not have an alloted time to halt play. Novak Djokovic's 2024 win against Lorenzo Musetti ended at 3.07am in Paris, with matches in New York and Melbourne often stretching late into the night. Many leading players have bemoaned the brutal schedule and Alcaraz, a seven-time Grand Slam winner, insists the time has come to make a change at the four majors. "For an athlete finishing at 3.30 in the morning, it means we had to leave the courts at 4.30, then back to the hotel," he told reporters in London on the eve of this week's Laver Cup.