TENNIS Wimbledon marathon cost me four toenails!
Anderson on agonising price of reaching final
IT was only in the dead of night that Kevin Anderson discovered the full price of playing a semi-final of unprecedented length at Wimbledon. Earlier on, that July evening in the middle of this summer, the 32-yearold South African had completed a six hour and 36 minute victory over John Isner which ended with him winning a deciding set 26- 24 to make the SW19 final.
Now he was lying in bed at his rented home in Wimbledon, aware of excruciating pain that was the payback for a match which was to lead directly to a major rule change. ‘At about 3.30am I woke up and my feet literally felt they were on fire,’ says Anderson, after folding his 6ft 8in frame into a comfy chair at the recent Paris Masters.
‘I couldn’t even have the sheets touching them. My physio was sleeping in a room downstairs and my wife had to go and get him.
‘ He did a treatment to release some of the pressure and get the bloodflow going, which provided some relief.’
The longer-term gain from the short-term pain is that the result helped Anderson qualify, for the first time, for this week’s singles at the Nitto ATP Finals at London’s 02 Arena. He plays the opening group s i ngles match t hi s af t ernoon against Dominic Thiem. After he and Isner traipsed off Centre Court, shattered, their epic proved just the beginning for the now world No 6. He had to somehow prepare himself for the final that was due to begin at 2pm on the Sunday.
Initially there were fears there might not even be a final, which is why Wimbledon have finally come round to introducing a tiebreak at 12-12 in the decider, although even that looks excessive.
Their marathon already had a profound effect on the weekend’s proceedings, with Rafael Nadal forced — unfavourably for him — to play indoors against Novak Djokovic and the women’s final pushed back from its allotted slot on Saturday so the second men’s semi-final could finish.
Meanwhile Anderson was doing everything he could to recover, and he gives a fascinating insight into the whole process. As he reveals, it did not start well.
‘I couldn’t have had more than four hours’ sleep that Friday night with the combination of the adrenaline and the discomfort,’ he says. ‘Immediately after the match it felt very emotional making my first Wimbledon final. There was a good 40 minutes just coming down from that. My mum was there and I called my dad. Then I did dhb the basic i procedures: cool-down, stretching, going into the ice tank, get some food and then you have to do media. That all took about two and a half hours, so it was not far off midnight when I got home, and then we did another treatment session.
‘That’s when it got pretty tough, because the emotions from the match had subsided a bit and my toes were uncomfortable, my feet very uncomfortable, and my whole digestive system out of whack. I wasn’t sick but I didn’t feel great and struggled to sleep.
‘On the Saturday I had a hit for 10 minutes at the most. You’ve just had a huge match and you’re wondering “Can I play another?” I was going to find a way to play but there was definitely a “How am I going to play the final when I feel like this?” in the background.
‘Your mind gets ahead of itself. I tried to stay in the moment. I had a lot more treatments and stretching through the day and managed to take a nap. I still had the adrenaline going on the Sunday morning and didn’t feel too bad. When you’ve lost, your body goes into recovery mode d and d sort of fh shuts d down. I kept it in a holding pattern a bit, had a normal warm-up and we played.’
He put up a decent fight under the circumstances, losing to Djokovic in straight sets, but the full effects lasted way beyond the weekend.
‘I think I eventually lost four toenails in all, including one not until a couple of months later that was related to that,’ he says. ‘Some of the muscular issues took a week to get over and the bruising probably took several weeks. Your toes are raw with the stopping and sliding. It wasn’t just the Isner match, I’d gone 13-11 in the fifth set to beat [Roger] Federer the round before.’
Few i n tennis will begrudge Anderson this Indian summer. A dedicated pro and an unusually thoughtful type, he has always been held in high esteem by his peers. As an activist against si ngle- use plastics, he has been a driving force in the ATP Tour’s efforts to make tournaments become more environmentally sustainable.
There was a time when South Africa was a reliable conveyor belt of high-class players but Anderson has become a largely isolated fig- ure from there. An early foe on court was eventual cricket star AB de Villiers, so talented he could have made a career at several sports. ‘I also played cricket and did athletics but all my family were tennis players so that was what I was going to focus on,’ says Anderson. ‘When I was about 10 I played AB, and I think he won. He was good but I think he made the right choice.’
Anderson’s progress deep into the top 10 might also serve as an inspiration for Andy Murray, because in late 2016 he suffered severe hip problems that forced him into a prolonged absence.
While his was a specific injury, as opposed to t he wear- and- t ear condition the Scot is now trying to manage, how he coped with it shines a light on some of the issues Murray will have faced.
‘It was really scary because something like that takes eight or nine months to recover from, I was told. You ask yourself all the time “Is it going to get better, do I need surgery?”. It took me a while to find form on the tennis court but at least I was healthy.’