Nicolas Mahut keeps a purple-and-yellow Wimbledon towel tucked away in a bathroom drawer at his home in France, a keepsake from the longest match in tennis history. Mahut occasionally steals a glance at the memento; he says he never touches it.
There’s another towel — also from that 11-hour, five-set marathon spread over three days at the All England Club last June — that Mahut tosses into his gym bag when he’s heading for what he figures will be a particularly tough workout or practice.
Yes, the man who lost the 70-68 fifth set that captured the world’s attention is fairly comfortable reminiscing about and, indeed, drawing inspiration from the ordeal. Already wrote a book about it, even.
“I think about it in tough moments, when I lose matches or when I don’t feel so good,” Mahut, 29, said. “I try to remember those moments so that I can feel stronger.”
He called that match “the greatest moment of my life as a tennis player - and, for sure, as a person.”
And the man who won that remarkable match, John Isner? He didn’t set aside any sort of souvenir to help take him back to an adventure that is certain to be discussed and deconstructed whenever Isner or Mahut is mentioned at Wimbledon, where play in this year’s tournament begins Monday.
“The stuff that I was wearing that day was all given away and went to either a Hall of Fame or charity or whatnot,” said Isner, 26, who is based in Tampa, Fla., “so I, myself, don’t have anything from the match.”
Recalling the set of commemorative wine glasses he was given by the All England Club, Isner said he passed those along to his mother, explaining: “I figured she’d put those to better use than me, because I don’t really drink wine.”
Truth is, Isner is eager to be associated with something other than that first-round Wimbledon match that dragged on and on and on - until, finally, it ended with the official score of 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (9-7), 7-6 (7-3), 70-68. It began June 22 and finished June 24, twice suspended because of darkness.
No other match had lasted longer than 6 hours, 33 minutes, a time Isner and Mahut surpassed by more than 4 1/2 hours. No other match had lasted more than 112 games; they played 183. The fifth set alone lasted 138 games over 8 hours, 11 minutes.
“When it’s all said and done with my career, maybe that Wimbledon match [will be] No. 2 on my achievements,” said Isner, who led Georgia to the 2007 NCAA team championship. “It’s tough for me to make that happen - and I know that I can.”
From the sound of it, the 6-foot-9, big-serving Isner thinks of his victory over Mahut not so much as a landmark achievement (one that’s noted by a plaque hanging on a wall at its site, Court 18) or a triumph of will, but rather as a first-round win at a tournament that lasts seven rounds.
And, as it happened, a first-round win that left him in no position to compete in the second round; not surprisingly, Isner was barely able to move and lost in straight sets.
“He won that battle; he lost the war, because he had nothing to give in the next match. You don’t want to be known for a first-round win. You want to be known for a final. He has that capability, if he puts the pieces of his game together,” U.S. Davis Cup captain Jim Courier said. “But that one set him back in a lot of ways, because I think it also distracted him for a little while afterwards.”
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