When the draw was announced at Wimbledon this year, the most talked about first-round match didn’t involve anyone in the Top 5. Or the Top 10. Or even the Top 20, for that matter. It involved two players whom London’s Guardian newspaper dubbed “journeyman middle rankers,” John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.
But while they were hardly legends on their own, they had become the most famous duo in tennis one year earlier, when they had also met in the first round of Wimbledon. That day they staged a match for the ages—and for the aging. Isner-Mahut I lasted for three days and more 11 hours and finished with a bizarre 70-68 fifth-set score. Along the way, the American and the Frenchman, destined to be linked forever, shattered the records for longest match, longest set, most games played, and most aces fired.
So it was with a gasp that word went out that they would have to do it all over again in 2011. Some called for the” journeymen” to be given the honor of playing on Centre Court, but the All England Club, never famous for bowing to public opinion, didn’t see it that way. They chucked them on to side court No. 3 at an obscure late-afternoon hour. By the time Isner and Mahut arrived, the stands were barely half full—only the media section was wall-to-wall bodies.
The two players looked let down, and their rematch felt the same way. Isner won 7-6 (4), 6-2, 7-6 (6), in nine fewer hours and 149 fewer games. But Isner and Mahut say they’ve become good friends; at the handshake, the Frenchman told his buddy, who had been too exhausted to advance past the second round last year, “I want to see you in the second week this time.” Like everything else about the sequel, that didn’t pan out, either.
—Steve Tignor
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