Wimbledon marathon cost me 4 toenails!

Anderson reveals agonising price of reaching SW19 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-year-old South African had completed a six hour and 35-minute victory over John Isner which ended with him winning a deciding set 24-22 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 rule change. ‘At about 3.30am in the morning I woke up and my feet 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 singles match this afternoon against Dominic Thiem. After he and Isner traipsed off Centre Court, shattered, their epic proved just the beginning for the now world No6. He had to somehow prepare himself for the final that was due to begin at 2pm on the Sunday.

Initially, there were fears that there might not even be a final at all, which is why Wimbledon have finally come round to introducing a tiebreak at 12-12 in the decider.

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.

‘I couldn’t have had more than four hours sleep that Friday night with the combination of the adrenaline and the discomfort,’ he says. ‘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?”.

‘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 ate in at the house that evening and got about eight hours’ sleep that night. 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 and sort of shuts down.

‘I kept it in a holding pattern a bit, had a normal warm-up and we played.’

Anderson put up a decent fight under the circumstances but lost in straight sets to Djokovic and the full effects lasted way beyond the Wimbledon final 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.’

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 the wear-and-tear condition that the Scot is now trying to manage, how he coped with it shines a light on some of the issues Murray will have faced, including how it can be difficult to choose the right treatment options.

‘Mine was a tear in the labrum,’ says Anderson. ‘Fortunately I was able to treat it conservatively. That’s very tricky from a mental standpoint. 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.’