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Showing up early and staying late didn’t work out well for me at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1993. I’m reminded of this as I watch one of my favorite Open matches for the first time in 33 years. The match between Mats Wilander and Mikael Pernfors ended at 2:26 a.m. Sept. 4, 1993. That I can only watch it again on an Italian broadcast on YouTube is part of the point. It set the record for latest match at the Open (a mark broken in 2022 by Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner). And I was one of the only American journalists to witness it. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The “showing up early” problem occurred just a few days earlier. I was covering Wilander that day as well, as he was quietly returning to tennis after not playing in any tour events in 1992. Wilander never drew the attention he deserved. He won three of the four Grand Slams in 1988, when he climbed to No. 1 in the world and moved to Greenwich. He claimed seven total Slam singles titles, as many as John McEnroe and just one less than Andre Agassi and Jimmy Connors. The Americans were just louder than the Swede, who achieved the rare feat of collecting Slams on clay, grass and hardcourt. As a result, Wilander was banished to the old Court 16 in his first-round match. The court was cherished for close-up vantages by fans, but a dubious outpost for a former Open champion. Seating for the media was along a bench that ran the length of the court, with a slap of tape in the middle segregating writers from photographers. When I arrived early, I was the only journalist there and sat at one end. As Wilander’s match against Brazil’s Jamie Oncins wore on, more journalists started to join me. My politeness came at a cost. Instead of rising to let others move past me, I just kept sliding farther down the bench. By the time the match was in the third set, the bench was full and I was parked on the tape a few feet from the net and drifting into the photographers’ turf. A Swedish photographer was the last to show, took one glare at me and barked at security that I needed to be removed so she could claim the spot. Want more CT Post? I did not yield. Neither did Wilander, who won in straight sets after needing 10 match points in a gripping tiebreaker. Advertisement Article continues below this ad My arrival for the second-round Friday night match was at the worst possible time as night-session fans arrived and day fans lingered. I’d never parked as far away before or since, landing next to a cement support for a highway overpass beyond the former World’s Fair grounds in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. While I watched the opening women’s match in the press seats at courtside at Louis Armstrong Stadium, Wilander and Pernfors waited together in the locker room. Both are Swedish, and good friends (the following year they co-founded a company that made ballcaps bearing international flags). On this night, according to Pernfors, they pledged that “whoever wins we’d definitely go out and have a couple of beers afterwards, thinking that the latest we would finish would probably be about eleven o’clock.” Their match didn’t start until 10:26 p.m. My latest press deadline was at 2 a.m., which still seemed safe. Wilander’s return to Center Court was emotional for many fans, who summoned chants of “1988.” Five years after reaching the sport’s summit, he had only recently turned 29 but was ranked 558th in the world and was only granted a wild card after Connors declined to return. Advertisement Article continues below this ad When he played at the Connecticut Tennis Center in New Haven, Wilander mentioned that he wished tennis was more like European football, with different divisions. He didn’t want to play all the time, acknowledging “I just like playing these local events” such as the Volvo International in New Haven, the OTB Open in Schenectady, N.Y., and the closest one to home: the U.S. Open less than 30 miles away. After winning the first set, Wilander's time off the tour seemed to catch up with him. He lost the next two sets soundly. He hadn’t played a five-setter in years, so this looked like Pernfors’ night. But Wilander claimed the fourth set on grit alone. He may have been No. 558, but he was still Mats Wilander. By the fifth set, the Big Apple was snoozing. There were about 1,000 fans left, just enough to pull off an exuberant “Wave” at 2:15 in the morning (I was relieved to see on the Italian footage that I retained journalistic neutrality and remained seated). Even in an empty stadium, I was afraid to leave my seat. Mike White of the former Greenwich News weekly paper brought me a Coke at 1:30 a.m. Aside from us, the only other English-speaking journalist left was a TV reporter without a camera to talk into. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Wilander claimed the win at 2:26 a.m., right at the four-hour mark. “At the end of the match, we looked at each other. Drinks? Nah!,” Pernfors recalled two years ago in a Facebook interview. When Wilander arrived in the pressroom, he was sore enough to moan while putting on a new shirt and cursed when asked how he was feeling. I was surrounded by a scrum of Swedish scribes who were anxious to grab quotes for their morning audiences (it was approaching 9 a.m. there). By tradition, English questions come first. Under normal circumstances, I would have been lucky to have squeezed in a single question during a press conference. But since I was the only person asking in English, I kept firing questions at both men. I have never been so hated by so many Swedes. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The grounds of the U.S. Open at 3:15 a.m. are like an empty snow globe glowing in an urban forest. As I walked to the park, the only lights were on the fabled Unisphere. I shoved my credit cards in my sneakers and vanished into a black hole. It took another 30 minutes to find my car. At one point I pondered running back to ask Wilander for a ride back to Greenwich. I remain grateful that even muggers sleep. I read a lot of coverage of the match in other newspapers that Sunday. The New York Times deemed it “one of the best Open matches in recent memory.” I’m not sure whose memory that was, since the story lacked a byline. Columnist Mike Lupica waxed poetic (“Lupica!” I muttered like Seinfeld damning “Newman!”). I didn’t see him there either, but at least Lupica had appeared with Wilander at a Special Olympics fundraiser in New Haven a few weeks earlier. Six years later, I went to Wilander’s Greenwich home to interview him about his then 2-year-old son Erik’s battle with Epidermolysis Bullosa, a genetic disorder that can cause skin to blister with even a slight touch. By then I knew Wilander’s plummet from the heights of the sport were triggered by the death of his dad. So, on that day we spoke about him on both sides of the net as son and father. But I couldn’t resist mentioning the epic Pernfors match and my roamings in the Queens darkness. Advertisement Article continues below this ad “Oh, I would have given you a lift,” Wilander replied. Apparently, I wouldn’t have even had to ask in Swedish. John Breunig is editorial page editor. jbreunig@hearstmediact.com; twitter.com/johnbreunig. Advertisement Article continues below this ad