328309D1-E547-4097-8893-9DB66A225F70
By Richard Pagliaro
© Susan Mullane/Camerawork USA
(June 24, 2010) Match point had come and gone four times, records were shattered and yet no finish line was on the horizon.
John Isner and Nicolas Mahut took tennis to places it had never been before in an epic, five-set 10-hour saga that set the record for longest match in tennis history and suspended due to darkness with the pair deadlocked at 59-59 in the fifth set of their Wimbledon first-round marathon match on Wednesday night.
Immediately after the match, the 6'9", 250-pound Isner took an ice bath to try to soften the swelling of the body blows he had absorbed while Mahut, whose spiky hair tops a chiseled frame that makes him resemble a rave DJ reinvented as a triathlete, tried to walk off the aches and pains and strained stomach that came from running a series of sprints in the marathon and his desperate dives across the grass.
The morning after came quickly for the pair and while Isner slept in, Mahut was on the grounds before 10 a.m. in preparation for the resumption of play at 3 p.m. local time.
"I"m feeling great," Mahut told ESPN's Pam Shriver. "My stomach is healthier a bit. I just want to fight again and again and just finish the match again."
The pair took tennis to uncharted territory but both have experience in participating in exhausting exchanges. Mahut outlasted Briton Alex Bogdanovic, 24-22, in the second round of qualifying then fought off veteran Stefan Koubek in five sets to reach the main draw.
Isner's devotion to the art of unrelenting shot making came at an early age: he was three years old, wearing a body cast and sitting in a wheelchair in front of the family's North Carolina home when his mom, Karen Isner, saw the stubborn devotion to repetition in her youngest child.
"He's a pretty persistent person," Karen Isner told ESPN. "He was 3 and broke his femur and was in a full body cast and he would shoot for hours. Laying in a wheelchair he would be out there forever shooting. So it's my fault."
The former all American from Georgia was wearing a red Georgia bull dogs t-shirt when he arrived on the grounds. Isner and Mahut have both been a pair of pit bulls of perseverance and Isner's mother looked forward to her son's return to forever today.
"Both players were absolutely extraordinary," Karen Isner said. "(John) really does represent the game well. He represents himself well. He is shooting to be top 10 he wants to play tennis as long as he can."
Isner and Mahut will take their first-round saga to the third day of play on the 782-seat Court 18 today.