Isner, Anderson longtime rivals

LONDON — Win or lose in his Wimbledon semifinal today against Delray’s Kevin Anderson, John Isner is changing his narrative here. The 33-year-old American has reached the first Grand Slam semifinal of his long career where he has been best known as a 6-10 big server who won the longest match in Wimbledon — and tennis — history.

“Of course, everyone is going to remember that match in 2010, and rightfully so,” Isner said. “I like to think that since that match, I’ve done a lot of good stuff on the court performancewise. But for a lot of people, that’s definitely the lasting image of my career. I think if I can keep going further here, I can maybe squash that.”

This was the final scoreline of that win over Nicolas Mahut: 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. It took 11 hours over the course of three days to complete.

Isner is playing the same game here, maybe a little more volleying, but with 160 tournament aces so far he leads the men’s field by a mile.

The 144-mph serve he hit in the second round win over Ruben Bemelmans was 3 mph short of the fastest serve all fortnight.

No. 9 Isner and No. 8 Anderson have played before. Many times. Both played college tennis, not the most conventional path to the ATP. Isner was at Georgia and Anderson at Illinois.

On the ATP Tour, Isner has an 8-3 advantage and has won the last four meetings.

“There could be a little mental aspect in our match,” Isner said. “I say that because our rivalry goes back way before the pro tour. We played each other in college probably three, four, five times. We played each other a bunch on the pro tour.”

Isner and Anderson will play the earlier semifinal on Centre Court today, followed by No. 2 Rafael Nadal and No. 12 Novak Djokovic.