June 18th, 2011
There’s no print button and it’s got to be 7,000 words, but none of that matters: Treat yourself to this amazing Ed Caesar piece on Isner-Mahut. Make an appointment, schedule the time. Even if you have to put it on your calendar for a week from now. There’s so much in here. Just a sample:
* My favourite statistic, though, is that in the fifth set, Mahut successfully served to stay in the match 64 games in a row . . .
* Isner was a late developer. Despite having been a gifted teenage player, he didn’t have a growth spurt until he was 16 – and, at 18, he wasn’t “strong enough, or good enough” to turn professional. Instead, he went to the University of Georgia on a tennis scholarship, where there were “a lot of good parties, and a lot of pretty girls”, and later captained his college team to the national championship watched by 6,000 drunken student fans. “It was pretty awesome,” he recalls.
* Mahut’s enjoyment, he says, was triggered by more than competition. After the many frustrations in his career, his pleasure came from fulfilling his potential. Mahut’s description is similar to what the French cyclist of the Fifties, Jean Bobet, calls “la volupté”: a sensual state of perfect sporting execution. “La volupté,” wrote Bobet, “is delicate, intimate and ephemeral. It arrives, it takes hold of you, sweeps you up then leaves you again. It is for you alone. It is a combination of speed and ease, force and grace. It is pure happiness.”
How did it feel to play tennis like that? “It was the biggest moment of my life,” says Mahut, gravely. “It was magical.”
* At 58-all, Isner called a bathroom break. Mahut decided to leave the court, too. As they walked, Isner spoke to his opponent for the first time in two days of tennis. He apologised for calling the break, because he knew it might affect Mahut’s concentration. At that moment, despite the state of the match, the Frenchman felt a surge of goodwill towards his opponent. It was the beginning of a great friendship.
* Mahut, meanwhile, felt sprightly. At the conclusion of play, he went to the gym to warm down for 15 minutes, before returning to his hotel, and eating a small dinner of chicken and pasta at a nearby restaurant. Unable to sleep, he stayed up chatting – “kind of about the match, but also about other things”, remembers Vallejo – before crashing at 1.30am. At 5.30am, he sent Vallejo a text message saying, “I can’t sleep; you want to go for a walk?” On their morning stroll, Mahut tried to avoid all news of the match. But, having bought L’Equipe to check on the football World Cup, he found his picture on the front page. “I didn’t read any of it,” he says.
* Mahut still finds the moment of defeat difficult to discuss, nearly a year on. “In my mind, it was the only tennis match I have ever played where I knew I could not lose,” he says. “So, when I did…”
Go. Soak it all in.
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