Isner vs Mathieu has intelligence written all over it

When a player enters the court, he brings in a certain amount of expectations into a game. The expectations may be due to the type of breathtaking shots they play, or the way he chases down the shots.

But when this player, who very recently broke into Top 10 in ATP rankings, takes the court, the expectations from fans are totally different. As a tennis fan, if you have committed yourself to any appointment, or a promise on the day he is playing, you, more often than not, will fail to attend to it. He never allows you to vacate the court if you are a live spectator, and if you are a TV viewer he will never allow you to switch off the television. This is what is expected of him.

Yes, I am talking of the young American John Isner. Not long ago in the year 2010, he played the longest match ever in tennis against Mahut in Wimbledon. The match took more than 11 hours to complete, and he almost threatened to repeat the same feat at Roland Garros which was thankfully averted by the local hero Mathieu of France in the second round.

All said and done, in all seriousness, yesterday’s match was one of the best matches played at Roland Garros and at the end of the day the score board read 6-7 6-4 6-4 3-6 18-16. For such a lengthy score line, the total duration which took to complete the match was normal. Both Mathieu and Isner, as they began their fifth set, especially after getting tied at 6 games apiece, might have realized by then that either of them, whoever would go to the next round could be in serious trouble of retiring with injury.

Then followed what I believe to be one of the most intelligent game of tennis ever played at Roland Garros. Foreseeing injury problems, they never tried to strain themselves by playing lengthy rallies though both of them were very much capable of doing it. They both were conserving their energy to the maximum level possible. Both of them were so confident of holding their serves, so did try very hard to break the other’s. The first three match points which Matheiu got when Isner was down 0-40 on his serve were because of the fact that the latter made unforced errors and not because of Mathieu’s play.

For Isner, chasing the balls should not be a tiring thing. With the sort of height he has, it would require just two or three steps to fetch the balls on either side of the baseline, but he never bothered to do it. He relied heavily on his first serve and strong forehands to hold his serve. The fact that he scored more than 100 winners with 90%, or more coming from his forehand says it all as to how commanding he was with his favourite weapon. Every winner which came from his forehand was like a bullet triggered from a revolver.

As far as Mathieu was concerned, neither was he so strong on his serves, nor was his forehand out of the ordinary. But, the main weapon was his double handed backhand with which he produced some stunning winners . Even World No.1 Novak Djokovic would have felt proud if he had seen him hitting backhands down the line continuously, and scoring winners almost every time he tried. In fact, Mathieu took advantage of the reluctant approach of Isner in retrieving the balls. The intensity of the Frenchmen could be seen from the way he reacted upon winning every single point with crowd behind him.

In this manner, both of them played and won points based on their strengths, but the one thing that made the difference was the number unforced errors, Isner committed. However, he could even up things by his aces and nonreturnable serves with which he relied on till the end. He was successful in saving not one but four match points only because of his serves, but in the end his errors proved too costly, and eventually he lost the serve and the match in the end. In the end it was Mathieu, who had the advantage of serving ahead in the final set, and picked up the victory eventually.

But till the end none of them could be picked as favourites to win the match. The ease with which they played was understandable from the fact that the longest rally of the match had only 19 shots played between them. In the fifth set both the players wasted no time between the points, both while serving and receiving. All these constituted in lessening the duration of the match which would have otherwise, extended up to seven hours or more.