Long Ball

As a kid, I would hit against a wall in a nearby park and pretend that I was on Centre Court. It was always the fifth set of the Wimbledon final, and while I don’t remember who I was playing, I do remember that the score was remarkably similar every time. Usually it was 9-7 in the fifth; something about those numbers had just the right ring of history and exhaustion. If I was in a more imaginative mood, and not as tired, I might string my poor doomed opponent all the way to 11-all before taking the last two games and accepting a standing ovation from the crowd. There are plenty of arguments for fifth-set tiebreakers, but one thing they don’t do is speak to a kid’s imagination in quite the same way as a set that's played all the way out. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun to spend two hours hitting against a wall if the final score in your head always had to be 7-6.

But there are limits to the imagination, even for a daydreaming 12-year-old. Mine never got anywhere near 70-68; that would have been a joke, a science-fiction number, a college basketball score. But while there was something surreal about the way John Isner and Nicolas Mahut reached that number over the last two days—after a certain point, every time the chair umpire called the score, a laugh of disbelief went up from the stands—it wasn’t a complete surprise. At 6-all, seeing how easily each guy was holding, I began to wonder if the match would ever end. Seriously. I couldn’t see either of them finding a way to break. Their serves were too good, and their return games—Mahut with his one-handed backhand, Isner with his restricted side-to-side movement—were too mediocre.

Both of those things stayed true for 138 games. Isner-Mahut was an epic, a jaw-dropper, a match that will be spread across multiple pages in the record books for years. Most of all it was a testament to the will of these two particular players. Was it enjoyable to watch? Well, yes and no. Point by point there wasn’t a whole lot there most of the time, unless you’re an ace fanatic. But game by game you couldn’t really turn away. It was a high wire act, in which neither guy seemed in any danger of falling off—that may not make for spine-tingling entertainment, but in a way that made the feat even more impressive. The spectacle wasn’t in the points themselves, but in the ability of both players to avoid the slightest letdown for eight hours. Even Roger Federer said he was speechless when he shook Isner’s hand afterward.

Did this match represent or crystallize any kind of trends in tennis? To me, it was the product of a few long-running developments. Height, for one, and the evolution of the tall player into more than just a serve. Isner, as you know, is 6-foot-9, but did you realize that Mahut, who looked tiny next to his opponent, is 6-foot-3? Yes, Isner hit 112 aces—I thought Ivo Karlovic’s record 78 from last year might stand forever—but at crucial moments, just when he seemed ready to keel over, he could also step around and belt a perfectly placed inside-out forehand from one corner to the other. And after all those aces, Isner finally won it with two pinpoint passing shots, the first of which he short-hopped off the baseline.

The other, more general trend that Isner-Mahut exemplified was the quality of play you can see from the second-tier of men's tennis now. The sport has evolved to a point where a first-round match between two guys well outside the Top 10 dwarfs the level of shot-making that we saw in the most dramatic finals of 30 years ago. Racquet technology, fitness training, stroke evolution, worldwide competition: After three decades, they’ve produced an individual like Roger Federer at the top end, and over the last three days they gave us a match where two players were good enough, when they took the ball to serve, to be unbeatable for a period of 11 hours. This was a match where the loser could hit 103 aces and, after 100 games, still have the energy to dive across the grass. This was a match where the winner could stagger around in a daze for four hours, whiff on several balls, and still have the stroke-making proficiency to go for dozens of games without facing a single break point. This was the modern game, with all of its power and skill, going up against itself. The shots that were once the province of the best—the forehand winner from behind the baseline, the ripped one-handed backhand down the line—are now routine, and can be repeated for hours.

There was only one winner, but you had to be equally impressed with both players. Isner has said that playing college tennis, where the pressure of having to come through for the team is always there, has made him a good tight-situation player. In D.C. a few years ago, he won five consecutive matches in third-set tiebreakers. But this was something different. This was truly mind over matter; Isner won despite his body. As for Mahut, I’ve always liked his old school, linear, forward-moving game, and I liked the way he never flagged, physically or mentally. He went about his business without any change for all 138 games. And afterward, I liked his graciousness, and his willingness to acknowledge that Isner had done something special in surviving. In the past, judging only by his vicious hair and prickly way of dealing with ball kids, I’d always assumed that Mahut was kind of a jerk. Not so, apparently—his dignity in defeat may be what I remember longest from this longest match.

My favorite moment, though, came not from either player, but from Jimmy Connors, who was announcing for Tennis Channel. When Isner reached double match point at 33-32, Connors rightly advised him to go for broke on the first one. Isner popped his return back to the service line, and then, for the first time in many games, hit a safe and tentative slice backhand. As soon as Jimmy saw him open up the racquet for a slice, he said, with real anxiety, “Oh no.” He was right, of course. The ball landed short, Mahut took it up the line, and a few minutes later he had held serve. It would be 73 games before Isner would have another serious shot at winning. Jimmy must have known what was coming when he said “Oh no.”

After watching ace after ace for hours yesterday, I went out and played a little myself—one hour, not 11. Is it a surprise that I had the best serving day I’ve had in years? I must have hit a dozen aces; when I threw the ball up, I felt like I couldn’t miss if I tried. I wasn’t pretending I was at Wimbledon this time—I’ll settle for a club championship in my daydreams these days—but Isner-Mahut and 70-68 was still powerful enough to speak to my tennis imagination.

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Quiz answers: 1) D; 2) C; 3) B (in 1970); 4) D; 5) B; 6) D; 7) D; 8) B; 9) B; 10) A