The Athletic has live coverage from Day 2 at Wimbledon 2025.

Some 20 hours after Taylor Fritz and Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard started a match that put Wimbledon’s curfew under a microscope, their battle ended like it always seemed it would: in a tight fifth set, with the man who executed his big-time serve in the crucial moments just a little better coming out on top.

Serving to stay in the match, Mpetshi Perricard missed four first serves, one second serve and two forehands as Fritz pulled off the strangest of comebacks from two sets down to win 6-7(6), 6-7(8), 6-4, 7-6(6), 6-4, after being two points from elimination the previous evening

“I thought it would be all over last night,” said Fritz, the No. 5 seed.

This last set was always going to a nervy one. The first four had ended just after 10:15 p.m. Monday night, after nearly three hours of roller coaster, tiebreak tennis between two of the biggest servers in the sport.

Fritz had won more points and made fewer errors, but found himself down two sets to love after losing two tiebreaks to the Frenchman, who is one of the only players in the sport with a serve bigger than the American’s. He hit the fastest in tournament history that first night, at 153 miles per hour, but Fritz blocked it back and won the point.

But the American, who prides his competitiveness above his tennis skill, rode out the storm to win the next two sets, including a fourth-set tiebreak in which he rallied from a 5-1 deficit, two points from defeat. After doing so, he pumped his chest to his box, let out a cry of “let’s f—ing go” and sat down ready to ride the wave of momentum to the finish line … or so he thought.

After a protracted discussion with a tournament official, the match was suspended due to the Wimbledon curfew, which is at 11 p.m. local time, even though it was only 10:18 p.m. when play was stopped. “Then don’t ask me,” Fritz said as he sat down in his chair and packed up his rackets, before saying to his box that he “couldn’t do anything.”

Fritz had all the momentum. Mpetshi Perricard had the environmental advantage, playing under a roof on a fast court, able to fire at will without any sun or wind to worry about.

Fritz wanted to play. Mpetshi Perricard wanted sleep – or maybe just a little more than a couple minutes to cool off from blowing the tiebreak and maybe the match. With the two players at a standstill, the call fell to the supervisor. He told the players they were done for the night. Fritz flailed his arms and made his case, to no avail.

After it was over, Mpetshi Perricard said in his news conference that the decision was simple for him. He did not want to stop at 4-4 or 5-5 in a fifth set and come back the next day.

Fritz said he understood that, but three-quarters of a day later, he was still a little baffled about how everything went down Monday night.

First, he didn’t understand why they were having the conversation in the first place. Second, after he lost the argument, he didn’t understand why the supervisor kept asking him how he felt about the decision

“He just wanted me to agree with him,” Fritz said after his win. “I said, ‘I don’t know why you keep asking me because I want to play. Stop asking me because you already said we’re not playing.’”

Fritz said he knew Mpetshi Perricard was better off playing indoors. He didn’t care. He was confident that he was in the ascendancy and had no intention of letting up. He said he went to sleep knowing that his opponent was probably going to be thinking hard about that last tiebreak.

“I think it would have been easy for me to get frustrated about not being able to play last night,” he said. “To be honest, I felt confident going into the fifth set if it was last night or today.”

After the supervisor had made his decision, Mpetshi Perricard had grabbed his bag and walked off, like a man given a reprieve. Fritz had taken to social media to tell the world he was ready to go, but his opponent had pulled the rip cord.

And so, a little more than 17 hours later, they walked back onto the court. As Fritz got ready to serve, the crowd got loud as it never does at the start of the match.

The All England Club confirmed the curfew as the reason for why the match was suspended 42 minutes before 11 p.m. Fritz and Mpetshi Perricard’s four previous sets lasted 44 minutes, 48 minutes, 33 minutes and 45 minutes, and only one of those sets would have fit within the time remaining.

The curfew rule was introduced by Merton Council in 2009, when a roof was installed on Centre Court. It is designed to “balance the consideration of local residents with the scale of an international tennis event that takes place in a residential area,” according to a previous statement from the All England Club. Its usage is designed to encourage fairness to both players in that context.

Unlike the other three Grand Slams, which run night sessions which can go into the early hours of the morning, Wimbledon stops play an hour before midnight without fail.

When Fritz and Mpetshi Perricard returned, their plot from the previous night stayed on track through the first nine games of the decider. Mpetshi Perricard had the best chance at a break midway through the set. Fritz served a double fault at 40-0, and then two points later, after another first-serve miss, Mpetshi-Perricard had the first of two chances to get to a break point, which would have been his first of the match.

A chip-and-charge play went awry. Fritz got his own serve back on track and survived.

Then they got to 4-3. Life often gets tight in tennis in the eighth game. Mpetshi Perricard was four poor points from giving Fritz a chance to serve out the match. He didn’t flinch, banging some of his biggest balls of the last set, though with air heavy and the balls picking up moisture from sweat and the grass, he didn’t get close to his record-setting serve of Monday night.

Fritz passed his own serve test at 4-4 with relative ease. And then it fell to Mpetshi Perricard to prove his nerve. He double-faulted on the first point, and the faults and errors never stopped until the last one went long. The world No. 5 and the top American man was moving on, about 20 hours after he thought he would.

(Top photo: Mike Hewitt / Getty Images)