Did you know? Doubles legend Daniel Nestor had a French Open record that stood for 19 years

PARIS – Daniel Nestor, 42 years old and on tour for more than 20 years, has played a lot of tennis matches.

But he remembers this one pretty well, even though it was 19 years ago.

Just 23 and still a few years away from his best singles efforts – and long before he turned exclusively to doubles – Nestor was playing Frenchman Thierry Guardiola in the second round of the French Open singles qualifying in 1996, after having beaten a player named Claude n'Goran from Adzopé, Cote d'Ivoire, in the first round.

He pulled it out – 4-6, 6-3, 22-20.

That total of 51 games stood as a high-water mark in French Open qualifying, where there is no third-set tiebreaker in any round, ever since.

Until Thursday, when Andrea Arnoboldi of Italy and Pierre-Hughes Herbert went about 4 1/2 hours – spread over two days. Arnoboldi won 6-4, 3-6, 27-25, playing 52 games in the third set alone. Their match was halted after three hours and six minutes for darkness Wednesday evening at 15-15 in the third set.

It was pretty crazy stuff. Here's how it looked on the second day.

Nestor's match was all in one day.

"Just the third set alone lasted three hours. Five-hour match, but the third set lasted three hours. It was good to win – definitely when you play a match that long, that's very tough to lose," Nestor told Eh Game. "But I had to play Guga the next day."

That would be Gustavo Kuerten, the Brazilian who at the time was 19. And he had turned pro only that year.

Nestor lost, 6-4, 6-2.

"I mean, he wasn't Guga yet, but he won it the next year," Nestor said. Indeed; ranked No. 63, Kuerten won the French Open singles title in 1997, unseeded.

So, would Nestor do away with this playing-out-the-third-set thing in qualifying?

Well ... that question opened a can of worms. It turns out Nestor has quite a few ideas about what he would do, if he ran tennis.

"If I were commissioner of this tour I would play no-ad scoring," Nestor said.

In singles, doubles ... everywhere? All the time?

Yes, he said.

"We've created a sport where it's virtually impossible to beat the No. 1 player in the world, because the balls are too slow and he's just better at rallying than everyone else," Nestor added. "It's better for the fans because we have longer rallies, but they've gone too far overboard. The balls are too heavy, and the courts are too slow."

What else?

"I would say no-ad scoring, three out of five (sets), and a tiebreaker in the fifth," Nestor said. "If they can do a shootout to determine the World Cup, they can do a tiebreaker in the fifth set (to determine a Grand Slam champion).

Makes sense.

Here are Nestor, and partner Leander Paes and fellow Canadian Adil Shamasdin and his Australian partner Rameez Junaid, practicing on side-by-side courts in the late afternoon Sunday.

Nestor and Paes are the No. 10 seeds in the doubles, while Davis Cup partner Vasek Pospisil is seeded No. 2 with American Jack Sock. Shamasdin and Junaid are unseeded.