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When John Isner wasted two match points at 33-32 in the fifth set of his first round match against Nicolas Mahut, it might have been the moment at which the match moved beyond the realm of the believable and into the territory of the supernatural. The only trouble with that is, most people had that exact same thought about, oh, 3 hours before the set crossed the 60-game mark. I ran out of words to describe the sheer ridiculousness of the match long, long before it was suspended because of darkness – after a point I could only look up at the score and shake my head in – progressively – disbelief, frustration and amusement. As the clock ticked by and the aces kept raining down, the score moving to 35-35, 45-45, 55-55, I was struck by a quote by Roger Federer after the marathon final he played last year against Andy Roddick, a match that ended at 16-14 in the 5th. Federer had said at the time, “I had a feeling at changeovers that we would be there all summer long, that they would close the roof, people would sleep all night and wake up and me and Andy would still be there, beards growing, holding serve”. You don’t know the half of it, Roger. Unlike your match last year, we were genuinely half-expecting something like that to happen this time. And we were frightened out of our wits at the thought. Thank God the Wimbledon organizers don’t allow play to be held at night.
The match was suspended at the astonishingly ludicrous scoreline of 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 59-59. It is already the longest tennis match in history, by a very large margin, both in terms of time (over 9 hours) and number of games played (161). There were other records that were shattered too; Isner now holds the record for the most number of aces in a match – the last one that I counted was No. 92, and the 5th set is easily the longest set ever played in any match. But this match was hardly about the records. Keep away the statistics – this is the kind of match that reminds us of the hypnotically strong hold that an athlete’s competitive instincts can have over his body. It is a match that tells us how a game can transcend its place as a mere source of entertainment to become the most full-blooded expression of the human spirit. It is a match that emphatically declares why we humans need sport and competition to be a part of our existence.
Just what was going through the minds of Isner and Mahut as they kept going at it, hammering service bullet after service bullet for all those hours of absolute life-sapping battle? We can never really know for sure, but if the thought of ‘not losing’ after putting up such a rich haul of effort was dominating either player’s mindset, it wasn’t showing in their games. There was no sign of conservative defense or nervy errors as the stakes got higher and higher. The aces, service winners and forays to the net kept making appearances right till the very end, and neither player seemed interested in keeping the ball in play or waiting for the other’s errors. Of course, considering the level of fatigue that they must have been experiencing, it is entirely possible that they didn’t have any option other than being aggressive and trying to finish the points early. Even so, it says a lot about the tremendous, other-worldly fighting spirit and self-belief that the two had in backing themselves to take the game by the scruff of the neck and never, even for a moment, thinking of letting go.
Isner looked physically spent for much of the 5th set, but one thing that stood out about him, apart from his obvious serving gifts and mental strength, was the quality of his forehand. As the match went into overtime and I had to tear my eyes away from all other matches (including a match involving Federer in which the supposed King of Grass struggled mightily against a qualifier no one had ever heard of before) to take in the full weight of what these two were putting on show, I counted two, maybe three inside-out forehand putaways that he missed. There’s a theory accepted by most recreational players (including yours truly) that when you play long matches that stretch well beyond your normal playing time, your feel for the ball and shot-making consistency reach new heights even as your legs and footwork start to falter. Now that theory may or may not apply to the top professional players of the world, but even if it did, I don’t think it had much to do with Isner’s irresistibly potent forehand drives. To make your money shot work with as much accuracy and for as long as Isner did is something that even the likes of Federer and Nadal would be hard pressed to replicate. Another standout feature of the match, of course, was Mahut’s serve. Since when did the French journeyman come to possess a delivery as infallible and lethal as the one he displayed today? It just goes to show how much effort and skill it takes merely to be ranked in the top 100 in the world.
As the match wore on for what seemed like eternity, I turned to the internet message boards for some respite from the exhausting act of watching the shocking scenes unfold on Court 18. And that wasn’t such a bad idea, because some of the comments and reactions from the people around the world who were as numbed as I was at the insanity of the match were pure gold. ‘Maybe these two are enjoying their own little private joke – they’ll probably go out for drinks later and say things like, “did you see the look on those people’s faces?”’, went one observer. BBC chimed in with “There is other tennis going on, but it all seems so half-hearted.” “The real loser here is IBM. Why program a score-board which fails at 50-50? If that’s a smarter planet, I don’t want to be on it” was the response of one indignant poster to the apparent breakdown of the IBM-powered scoreboard at the official Wimbledon site. And how about this for comic genius – ‘At 100-all, the Queen should knight them both. But they would both be too tired for the last part of the ceremony.Queen: “Arise, Sir John Isner.”Isner: “Oh shove it. I’m lying down.”’
For the 4th year running, Wimbledon has produced a match for the ages, a match that will become a part of tennis folklore and will be relived and retold for decades to come. The big difference is that this time, the legendary once-in-a-generation encounter has come in the first round instead of in the final. Can anything that Federer, Nadal & Co produce on the second Sunday of this year’s tournament eclipse the unthinkable, superhuman, unforgettable effort that Isner and Mahut put on show today? Play will resume tomorrow, and it is likely that one of the two men will barely be able to make it out of bed in the morning, and even if he does, will not be able to sustain his resistance for any reasonable length of time. But I think it is perfectly appropriate that the result wasn’t established tonight – for once, the cliché “it’s cruel that there had to be a loser in such a magnificently fought match” will not hold true. There was no loser today. Isner and Mahut gave it all they had to ensure exactly that.
