Isner wins, and can't believe it's over.
After this photo was taken they kept playing, out of habit.
So as you probably know, American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut completed, by far, the longest tennis match ever. The previous record was a 6 hour, 33 minute true epic at the 2004 French Open. This one took 11 hours and 5 minutes for Isner to defeat Mahut 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. An incomprehensible 70-68. That's higher scoring than a WNBA game, and about as unexciting, because both players were so dog tired they couldn't do much with their returns. They broke the scoreboard, which inexplicably was programmed to only go to 47. It set all kinds of records including the longest match ever (the 5th set alone was longer than the French Open match), most games in a match at 183 which is 100 more than the previous record, and both players shattered the record for aces in a match. They had to stop the match for darkness... twice. But that stuff is fairly well known now. You probably didn't know though, that you could do the following things and be finished before the match was over (if it were to be played non-stop):
-Run a marathon. Twice.
-Fly from Isner's home in Tampa to Wimbledon in London.
-Have major surgery done you. You could check in to the OR as the players made their way onto the court, get into pre-op, get knocked out, have an organ removed and then come to and they'd still be playing.
-Watch the entire series of Firefly.
Just make sure you wear the stylish Jayne Cobb hat while doing so.
-Watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with bathroom breaks.
-Go to an Allman Brothers show. This one might be cutting it close.
-Walk across Delaware. Really. The average person walks 3 miles an hour, and Delaware is 30 miles wide. So you could stop for lunch halfway through.
-Listen to the entire Beatles' discography.
You could try holding one of these faces for 11 hours, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Additionally, the Guardian's blog of Wednesday's play is a sight to behold. It needs to win an award of some kind:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/jun/23/wimbledon-2010-tennis-live
4.05pm: The Isner-Mahut battle is a bizarre mix of the gripping and the deadly dull. It's tennis's equivalent of Waiting For Godot, in which two lowly journeymen comedians are forced to remain on an outside court until hell freezes over and the sun falls from the sky...
On and on they go. Soon they will sprout beards and their hair will grow down their backs, and their tennis whites will yellow and then rot off their bodies. And still they will stand out there on Court 18, belting aces and listening as the umpire calls the score. Finally, I suppose, one of them will die.
4.25pm: ...But none of this means a thing to the Everlasting Zombie Tennis Players on Court 18...
John Isner's serving arm has fallen off. Nicolas Mahut's head is loose and rolling bonelessly on his neck. And yet still they play on. The score is now 21-21 in the fifth and final set. This is now, officially, the longest final set in Wimbledon history.
4.45pm: ...Both men, as has been established, are now dead on their feet, although the Frenchman looks the marginally less rotten (a few less worms wriggling from his eye sockets).
5.05pm: ...On Court 18 it is very different. On Court 18 a match is not won and lost; it is just played out infinitely, deeper and deeper into a fifth and final set as the numbers rack up and the terrain turns uncharted. Under the feet of John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, the grass is growing. Before long they will be playing in a jungle and when they sit down at the change of ends, a crocodile will come to menace them.
5.25pm: Isner and Mahut are currently level at 28 games apiece in what people are now telling me is the longest match in Wimbledon history. Over on Court 14, Thiemo De Bakker and Santiago Giraldo are locked at 14-14.
This suggests that the curse of Court 18 has started to infect the other courts too. What happens if they just keep going?
5.30pm: Phew, the Wimbledon Zombie Pandemic has been contained. Thiemo De Bakker comes through 16-14 in the final set of his match against Santiago Giraldo. He will now play (hysterical laughter) the winner of the match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut.
6pm: The score stands at 34-34. In order to stay upright and keep their strength, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut have now started eating members of the audience. They trudge back to the baseline, gnawing on thigh-bones and sucking intestines. They have decided that they will stay on Court 18 until every spectator is eaten. Only then, they say, will they consider ending their contest.
6.25pm: The scoreboard is barely visible through the grass and weeds and trails of Spanish moss. It shows that John Isner and Nicolas Mahut are locked at 37 games each in the final set.
I'm wondering if maybe an angel will come and set them free. Is this too much to ask?
7.45pm: What happens if we steal their rackets? If we steal their rackets, the zombies can no longer hit their aces and thump their backhands and keep us all prisoner on Court 18. I'm shocked that this is only occurring to me now. Will nobody run onto the court and steal their rackets? Are they all too scared of the zombies' clutching claws and gore-stained teeth?
8.40pm: It's 56 games all and darkness is falling. This, needless to say, is not a good development, because everybody knows that zombies like the dark.
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