Location: My Hotel room in Pretoria, 5.20am, Thursday 24 June.
This blog is dedicated to two heroes of the courts – and I’m not talking about the judge and his bailiff. When they look back on the match between Isner and Mahut, the tennis scribes will run out of superlatives and probably just wish it hadn’t taken this long.
59-59! You have to type it out in full to realise the enormity of this record. Fifty-nine – Fifty-nine!!! In the fifth set. It’s so awesome that comparisons just don’t work.
This all started when I was talking to my son Dan in Dublin and he asked me if I’d heard about this game at Wimbledon, and I said I hadn’t, and he said how long do you think the final set between Isner and Mahut had gone, and I guessed – based on watching Charlie Pasarell and Poncho Gonzalez way back in the late 60s when I was a teenager and addicted to watching sport on telly, and that match went to something like 118 games and the 5th set went to about 23-21.
So I guessed about 25-all. And Dan said 56-56 and I said you’re joking, and he said - Yeah, it’s still going on and I’m not sure what the score is.
My Producer on this trip, Colm Magee, texted his best mate, only ever referred to as the ‘Big Man’, and he confirmed the veracity of the story and I could rest assured that my son hadn’t taken to the drugs.
Well that conversation with son number two happened a period of time ago that’s less than it has taken our two sporting heroes to find a conclusion to their game of tennis. If it wasn’t for the Argentine camera crew living next to me in the Courtyard Hotel in the suburb of Arcadia of the town of Pretoria waking me up at 3am with their boisterous laughter, this piece may never have been written.
I mean, I have a job to do here in South Africa – and it doesn’t include writing about a tennis game at 5.30am! Let’s do the maths here. Most tennis games last about three or four sets, say ten games per set, that’s approximately 35 games. If you allow for three tie-breaks and two normal sets, that’s 59 games, tops. Right?
Wrong! Our tennis heroes, these bionic sluggers in whites, on one of the hottest days of the year, have gone on court, played the preliminary skirmishes of four sets and – without knowing the details cos I haven’t seen one point of this amazing match, don’t forget, I’m at the World Cup and doing live commentaries most days – they have then proceeded to play 118 games in the 5th set without finding a winner.
This makes the 30 years war between England and France seem like child’s play!
If this were a soccer game it would be the equivalent of a penalty shoot out going on so long that both goalkeepers would have to take about ten penalties. It would be like a match play game of golf going to the fifty-seventh hole of sudden death. In athletics it would be an ultra marathon lasting at least ten hours, let’s say 75 miles.
And they are still not finished. Isner and Mahut have to start again. They have to drag themselves away from their hospital beds and face each other once more and find some way of sorting out this sporting conflict.
What about the Wimbledon schedule? Normally four matches would be down for decision on each day on each court. These guys have hogged the facilities all to themselves. If every player did this there’d be chaos. The All England Club would be forced to take over the local tennis facilities and demand that young kids smitten by their annual tennis bug give way to professionals that just don’t know how to finish a game.
And the TV schedulers, I’ve worked with them, the ones who don’t know much about sport and ask how long will this match take, and you say over the talkback in an exasperated tone ‘I don’t know, how long is a piece of string!’ they will be tearing their hair out if this continues. How can one match last over nine hours?
And what about the fans, those besotted tennis lovers that pitch up at Wimbledon every year in the hope of seeing one of their favourites. And they couldn’t get a ticket for Centre or No1, and they’ve parked themselves at Court No blah to watch this 6’9” American and this little known Frenchman – I hope he’s French cos I haven’t checked my facts here, I have too many footballers to worry about and there’s only so much research a man can do in one day – and the umpire says ‘Play’… and nine hours plus later our dedicated follower of tennis has a sore neck from watching Isner hit more aces in a tennis match than anyone in history, over 100 I believe, and he’s still not finished.
I have visions of mobile floodlight systems being moved in, of intravenous drips set up at the Umpire’s chair to avoid our heroes getting dehydrated, of tournament organisers talking to the player’s coaches and pleading with them that a deal might be done to end it here and now and let us get our tournament schedule back on track, please!
At this rate these guys will be playing their second round match while the quarter-finalists await their opponents next week! It’s unbelievable. It’s bizarre. It’s tennis chaps – and I love it.
118 games of tennis in one set. How many match points have there been? How many litres of liquid have our heroes consumed? How many times have the line judges had to be changed? Does the same umpire stay with the game throughout? Will a plaque be erected on this court to commemorate the longest sporting duel outside of chess?
Later on these mighty men will turn up again, health willing, do a warm-up, and the umpire will say ‘Play’, and the whole match might be decided in eight points.
For the sake of us all, and most of all for Isner and Mahut, I hope it ends that way because they have already made history and the ghosts of Pasarell and Gonzalez can rest in the knowledge that their six-hour game was a mere bagatelle.
