Big John

He weighs 250 lbs. He's the tallest player in the current field. They played for almost seven hours yesterday surpassing the longest game in history. Twice stopped for darkness. A three day first round match. Five match points--only three breaks of serve in the entire match. 218 aces between them. They both surpassed the record for aces in a game--in the final set. I'm so glad that John Isner won on a back hand slice and not a double fault. Mahut didn't have many double faults, but with so many aces, a few double faults are the price you pay.

70 to 68 in the fifth set. Unbelievable and yet, the risk that Wimbledon takes by having no tie break in the fifth set. At the end of the first game today, the ref said, "60 - 59 in the final set" and the crowd laughed. Classic.

The rest of the news is anti-climactic. No real upsets. Fedderer is playing more five set matches then usual, but he takes care of business. Stosur is out early, but her wins at the French were pretty unusual for her. Oudin is out in the second round, but again, she's not been a force since her surprise wins last year. Marty Fish didn't survive the second round--disappointing, yes, surprising, no. We have some great matches in the pipeline--Sharapova and Serena and Petrova and Henin, then the winners of those two matches. Any one of the four of them could win the whole thing. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing Sharapova beat Serena, but I won't hold my breath or anything foolish and I would love to see Petrova beat Henin and then play Serena. A Petrova/Venus final would be something, indeed. Anyway, that is a very tough section of the draw. On the mens side, Monfils and Hewitt and then the winner will probably play Djokovic, but otherwise just keep an eye on the remaining American men, Roddick, Querrey and Isner. Isner and Querrey are supposed to play doubles today and then Isner is supposed to play his second round match tomorrow and if he wins, he's in line to play Nadal in the fourth round, if he gets through. No rest for the weary. Unless he loses. I won't be surprised, but I will be disappointed.

It is Royal Thursday, since the Queen is in attendance. She hasn't attended since the Seventies. Not even for Pete Sampras and Stephi Graff--her loss. Except that maybe she likes her tennis the way I like my tennis--from my sitting room on TV.

I've been in mediation and court in the past 24 hours--try following tennis from an iphone. It's not impossible, but it is very challenging. I had to keep hitting the refresh key to follow the score of the Isner match and then when I found out he won today, I was in court and it was all I could do to not leap up for joy. The judge did not appear to be a tennis fan and I had to bite my tongue not to wax on about the match when it was my turn to speak--I mean really, who cares about the stupid cases--ISNER WON an absolutely EPIC match! But I kept my mouth shut. Then on the very long drive back to the office, at every stop light (there were many on my route, thank goodness), I was trolling google to get a news report of how Isner won. There was so little news--just an AP report with the score for the longest time. Then about an hour after the match ended, the stories started streaming in on google so fast that I couldn't get the latest story to click on before another scrolled on. Finally, I got a more detailed account and just then the radio graced me with a report and they had interview remarks. Now I'm back at the office and I finally have my fill...and now you have yours...(but I digress).