Maybe you've used Craigslist to find an apartment or a cheap piece of exercise equipment.

Darren Iverson used it to find some people to play against him in tennis.

Normally, Iverson — the head girls' tennis coach at Faribault High — wouldn't need to scrounge up opponents. But starting at 6 a.m. Friday, he will attempt to play 40 singles matches against 40 different opponents in 40 hours. Along the way, he hopes to raise money for his team and — oh, by the way — set the Guinness World Record for most consecutive singles tennis matches played.

The current record is 33 best-of-three sets singles matches in a row. If all goes well, Iverson, 38, will play an assortment of kids he used to coach, friends and Internet invitees all the way until 10 p.m. Saturday, smashing the record in the process.

"I cast a pretty wide net. I responded to a couple of Craigslist ads where people were looking for matches," Iverson said. "I thought it would be easy to find 40 opponents. It was tougher than I thought, but we got there."

That's probably because if Iverson is really going to play for 40 consecutive hours — you can follow his progress via @falconstennis23 on Twitter — matches will naturally start at some pretty weird times. Anyone for tennis at 3 a.m. Saturday?

"Most of the overnight matches were the ones where I had to call in a favor," Iverson said.

But aside from two-minute breaks between sets, 90-second changeovers and a few bathroom breaks, it will be all tennis for Iverson. The matches will be held at Faribault High, with a tennis block party from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday serving as a centerpiece for the second day.

Iverson is hoping his rough calculation of one hour per match turns out to be correct.

"It's a little hard to figure out how competitive I'm going to be 40 hours in," Iverson said with a laugh, "because I haven't played that long."

The only potential snag is some rain in the forecast Friday morning, but for now, Iverson is resting his legs and hoping for the best. He started the application process for the Guinness World Record in November and has numerous volunteers set to record the proceedings to make it all official.

"I've been coaching quite a while and I thought about it as a promotional event fundraiser for a while," Iverson said. "Also, I think it would be really cool to have a world record."

michael rand