FRENCH OPEN Marathon Man loses 18-16 fifth at Paris
This, then, is who John PARIS — Isner is for now: The Marathon Man of Tennis, the guy who plays and plays and plays, for hours on end, until the last set seems interminable.
At Wimbledon two years ago, he won 70-68 in the fifth, the longest set and match in tennis history. At Roland Garros on Thursday, as afternoon gave way to evening, the 10th-seeded American lost 7-6 (2), 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 18-16 to Paul-Henri Mathieu of France in the second round, a 5-hour, 41-minute test of stamina and attention span.
This one goes in the books as the second-longest match, by time, in French Open history.
“I just didn’t get it done. I felt like I got caught in patterns that weren’t ideal for me,” said a somber Isner, whose exit means there are no U.S. men in the third round for the first time since 2007. “I wasn’t going for my shots at certain points in the match, and that comes from a little bit of a lack of confidence.”
If the 6-foot-9 Isner, who led Georgia to an NCAA title, is going to become more than a novelty act, he needs to win encounters like Thursday’s, and not because of the duration but because it was a first-week Grand Slam match against a player ranked 261st who got into the field thanks to a wildcard invitation from the tournament. After finally converting his seventh match point — Isner never had one — an emotional Mathieu thanked the partisan crowd in the main stadium for willing him to victory. Their sing-song choruses of “Po-lo! Po-lo!” — the French equivalent of “Paulie” — and roars of approval rang out after pretty much every point he won down the stretch.
“I dug deep,” said the 30year-old Mathieu, who hadn’t played in a major tournament since the 2010 U.S. Open because of a left knee injury that forced him off tour all of last year. “I was away from the courts for quite a while, and I came back to live moments like this.”
He helped provide easily the most intrigue on a day that featured straight-set wins for defending champions Rafael Nadal and Li Na.
About 10 hours earlier, it appeared a man seeded even higher than Isner would be on his way out of the tournament: No. 4 Andy Murray’s back was so painful he could barely move, let alone play tennis at the level required to win a Grand Slam match. Or so it seemed. And then, thanks in large part to a couple of massages from a trainer, Murray began to feel better. It helped, too, that his opponent, 48th-ranked Jarkko Nieminen of Finland, was incapable of taking advantage of Murray’s nearly incapacitated state. So Murray managed to come back to win 1-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 and reach the third round at Roland Garros for the fifth consecutive year.