WIMBLEDON, England — The tennis match that would not end did not.

I had taped two days of Wimbledon tennis - took Johnny to summer school - went to pick up some plants - and kept stopping to do things, and coming back to it was confusing - the same 2 guys were playing the next day?? It's an amazing story - these guys played 7 hours today, no food, no bathroom breaks til the end - and they continue tomorrow (well, tonight, they are 9 hours ahead of me!) Can't wait to see how it ends!

June 23, 2010
To Be Continued ...
By GREG BISHOP

WIMBLEDON, England — The tennis match that would not end did not.

After two days and 163 games, including 118 on Wednesday alone, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut left Court 18 at Wimbledon with records for the longest match, in both time elapsed and number of games, in professional tennis history. And it still wasn’t over.

The chair umpire suspended the match (again) at 9:11 p.m. because of darkness (again), 7 hours 6 minutes in. Not seven hours into the match. Seven hours into the fifth set. At that point, Isner and Mahut had produced an epic standstill, two sets apiece, 59-59 suspended in time. They will not resume play before 3:30 p.m. (10:30 a.m. Eastern) Thursday.

“Nothing like this will ever happen again,” Isner said immediately afterward on television. “Ever.” Aside from the brief on-court interview, the players were not available to answer questions.

As the match wore on, Isner, 25, appeared ready to collapse. He looked tired. Beyond tired. Can-you-believe-my-match-lasted-10-hours tired. He looked as if he wanted to cry, or crawl off the court, or find the nearest bed and sleep for a year, or five.

Instead, at 58-58, he tossed his racket on the grass and lumbered toward the bathroom. That might seem insignificant. So might a first-round match at Wimbledon between unheralded players.

Isner returned and scratched out his fifth match point, only to watch Mahut boom another ace. Shortly afterward, Mahut, a 28-year-old Frenchman, approached the chair umpire and said that he could no longer serve or see. Isner joined the conversation and threw his head back, clearly miffed at the direction — Thursday, round three — the match was headed.

“We couldn’t agree to play,” he said. “So they canceled.”

The match garnered international attention. Isner became a trending topic of Twitter, sandwiched between Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Landon Donovan, long before play was suspended.

Novak Djokovic, the third seed, said players gathered around the televisions in the locker rooms for hours. Across the ocean, Kobe Bryant told reporters that he and his Los Angeles Lakers teammates watched it, too.

Roger Federer walked onto Court 1 for his second-round match while Isner and Mahut were at 11-11 in the fifth. Federer won, showered, dressed and pushed back his news conference at least three times. In some ways, Federer said, he wished that he were Isner or Mahut. In other, more obvious ways, he did not.

“I’m aware, yes,” he said. “I’d be a fool if I wouldn’t know. This is a very special match. I hope somehow this is going to end.”

While Federer addressed members of the news media, the 23rd-seeded Isner and the unseeded Mahut kept on their serve-dominated match. Both broke the men’s singles record for aces in one match (98 for Isner, 95 for Mahut, both obviously counting). The match unfolded like that commercial with Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi, where one point lasts through winter.

It even broke the courtside scoreboard, which went awry and was turned off late in the day.

“It’s a marathon,” Venus Williams said, before catching herself. “It’s longer than a marathon.”

More like three marathons, or one triathlon, or nearly a flight from Los Angeles to London. By dusk, even sipping water looked like a chore for Isner, who alternately grimaced and clutched his back.

He was not alone. The chair umpire appeared to sit for 426 minutes. The players ran out of changes of shirts. The fans lined Court 18, five deep in some spots, and they climbed the railings and peeked through one hole in the fencing for better views.

In all, hundreds dipped in and out, peering down from the upper railing, or scrambling for space below. All to stake claim later to having been there, for that moment, the match that would not and did not end, not Wednesday.

At the University of Georgia, where Isner went to college, some 65 tennis campers gathered around a television. Watching Isner, Manuel Diaz, his college coach, thought back to one national indoor final, when Isner injured his foot days beforehand and still hobbled out of bed to win.

“That’s the kind of guy he is,” Diaz said. “So this is not a huge surprise for me.”

In Medina, Ohio, Vicki Nelson heard of Isner’s match and went inside to watch. It was Nelson who once held the record for longest match in tennis history, 6 hours 31 minutes against Jean Hepner in Virginia, or shorter than Wednesday’s incomplete fifth set.

Nelson and Hepner played their match in one day, not three, but still she felt for Isner and his mother, Karen.

“It must have been agony for her,” Nelson said. Back at Wimbledon, both Federer and Andy Roddick were reminded of their five-set final here last year, a relative sprint taken by Federer, 16-14. Roddick noted that the men’s game, especially on grass, lends a big advantage to big servers. It was that way for him and Federer. That way on Wednesday, too.

The players will return to Court 18 on Thursday afternoon, as the third match on that court, 10 hours into their epic. Diaz worried how the 6-foot-9 Isner, one of the most potent servers on the men’s tour, would hold up over the third day. Nelson wondered if both players would be so stiff that their third installment would end quickly.

Late Wednesday, Federer watched Isner wobble, stumble, nearly cease movement altogether. Federer could not decide whether to cry or laugh. But he still maintained that Wimbledon does not need to institute tie breakers in the fifth set.

“It’s perfect the way it is,” he said. “It’s unfortunate these guys are going to be a little bit tired tomorrow and the next day and the next week and the next month.”

With that, the match that would not end continued.

Dave Seminara contributed reporting.