Silenced by giant American
an abdominal issue that hampered his preparations last week.
In addition to becoming Britain’s first men’s singles title winner in 77 years at Wimbledon when he claimed the trophy in 2013 – and adding another in 2016 – Murray always had managed to make it to at least the third round in his 13 prior appearances.
‘‘It’s no secret that I am definitely not a better tennis player than Andy Murray. I might have been just a little bit better than him today. It was an incredible honour to play him on this court, in front of this crowd,’’ said Isner, 37. ‘‘At the age I’m at now, I need to relish these moments. This was one of the biggest wins of my career.’’
Murray can still hit crisp, clean groundstrokes, and he accumulated merely 13 unforced errors to 39 winners against the 6-foot-10 (2.08-meter) Isner. And Murray can still return about as well as anyone, often getting serves topping 130 mph (210 kph) back over the net. But he could not quite do that enough: Isner hit 36 aces and delivered another 60 unreturned serves across the match’s nearly 31⁄2 hours.
Next for Isner is a third-round matchup against No10 seed Jannik Sinner. Other men who won yesterday included threetime defending champion Novak Djokovic and No 5 Carlos Alcaraz.
In addition to No 10 Raducanu’s exit, No 2 Anett Kontaveit lost to Juke Niemeier, of Germany, 6-4, 6-0, and No 9 Garbine Muguruza, the champion at Wimbledon in 2017 and the French Open in 2016, was beaten by Greet Minnen 6-4 6-0.
Women’s winners included 2021 runner-up Karolina Pliskova, No 8 Jessica Pegula, three-time major champion Angelique Kerber and 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko.