The Game (Tennis Edition)

Wimbledon has always been the most revered tennis tournament of them all, and if the first round is an indication, this year is shaping up to be quite staggering. First was #1 seed Roger Federer going down two sets to none and coming back to win, and then there's the match between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut. The match began on Monday and twice had to be suspended for darkness. It went the full 5 sets, and because Wimbledon does not employ a tiebreaker in the deciding set, the players were forced to battle until one of them managed a two-game advantage.

As it turns out, that would take both an unprecedented 138 games, and the 5th set alone lasted over 7 hours. The final game score for the last set was 70-68. Records were broken all over the place; most serves, longest match, longest set, most number of games, etc. More here.

After all of that, the sweat, the All-England Club decided to recognize this historic event with a small ceremony, also completely unprecented for a first-round match. They called out the significance of the match, and then proceeded to lavish praise to the umpire for all the work he did. It was one of the strangest moments I've seen in television. Here are these two men who have battled each other in a way that the sport has never seen and will likely never see again, through three days and over 11 hours of grueling back-and-forth. Completely unprecedented in tennis or any sport. And then there's the umpire, whose job was not trivial, but next to Isner and Mahut there is simply no comparison. To congratulate the umpire (and they even gave him a gift) ahead of the players is tantamount to thanking the official scorekeeper after a marathon baseball game for all the hard work put in. The only reason the chair umpire had to be there as long as he did was because of the two people playing to absolute exhaustion; and that's what should have been given the most attention.

Still, it was an absolutely epic (note here the appropriate use of the word) match and if you haven't watched it and have any interest in tennis, I encourage you to watch as much as you can. In fact, just watch the 5th set, and if you watch it all the way through you'll get a glimpse into what those players went through. You'll also get a glimpse (more accurately I might add) for what the chair umpire went through.