Berberis' World

Amidst all the hype and hoo-ha surrounding the World Cup, it has largely gone unnoticed that the longest tennis match ever (not the only record smashed, if you’ll pardon the pun) has just finished at Wimbledon. I’ve been a tennis fan since Bjorn Borg’s first SW19 win in 1976 – although my interest waned somewhat after Andre Agassi retired – and, as one measure of how much has changed since then, I found myself this evening agreeing with John McEnroe.

Yesterday, as we watched Nicolas Mahut and John Isner walk leaden-footed and glassy eyed off Court 18, following the 2nd episode of their still unfinished 10 hour match, he remarked that, in his opinion, no footballer had the same incredible level of fitness. How right he was. These two grass-stained gladiators – neither of whom I’ve ever heard of – had been playing at 100% on the hottest day of the year so far, unable to get themselves substituted, fined (points, games, even the match, let alone money) if they wasted time writhing around on the grass “suffering” from an “injury”. True, they were both collared immediately post-match for some unnecessary chit-chat by a pasty interviewer, when they clearly wanted nothing more than an IV drip, an ice bath, followed by a Turkish massage. Well, maybe not the massage – they were in enough pain already.

Let’s face it, football is a game of 2 pretty short halves: 45 minutes of the occasional sprint, followed by a break for oranges/going to the loo/ducking hurled boots, followed (if you’re lucky or uninjured) by another 45 minutes of occasional sprinting. Maybe you get to take a free kick, maybe you even get to take a penalty. Chances are all you’ll actually do is stop the ball going out before passing it back to whichever goalie they’ve decided needs humiliating.

Just after 5pm this afternoon, I watched on the ward’s grainy portable as the umpire and players were given mementos (very British) of their 11 hour and 5 minute marathon, laughing out loud as I saw the numbers on the scoreboard. 70-68. Neither Isner nor Mahut looked in much better shape than they had last night, but it wasn’t much of a surprise that Isner won. You don’t need to be able to run very far when you’re serving well.

Nicolas Mahut will go to his next tournament £11,250 richer. That works out to just over £100 an hour. The Premier League’s Fernando Torres gets paid six times that for having 10 other people helping him get through a game less than 15% in duration.

After getting through to the 2nd round, a smiling John Isner said that more or less every part of his body hurt, and he’d lost all the skin on both his little toes. If, as seems likely, he loses his next match, he’ll net (sorry) £18,750 for his efforts. With that, he should just be able to afford 2 new knees.