20
Isner vs. Mahut: Maybe The Most Amazing Sporting Event, Ever
3 Comments · Posted by Scoop Malinowski in Articles, Scoop
70-68 in the fifth set. If anybody ever suggested to you that a match like this could happen, your reaction pre-Wimbledon 2010 would have been to give them something like the old fisheye. 19-17 in the fifth or something like that was crazy enough but that’s about as far as a match can go.
But it happened. It actually happened. 70-68 in the fifth set.
It’s like a miler suddenly out of the blue, chopping a minute of the world standard by running a three-minute mile. Or a baseball slugger one day hitting a home run 2000 feet. Or a basketball game going 25 overtime periods. Or a golfer hitting three holes-in-one in the same round at a major.
Miracles don’t happen often in sports but maybe the greatest one in all happened in tennis last year thanks to John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. Can you think of another more astonishing result in sports that completely defies logic?
There was “The Miracle On Manchester†which was the playoff comeback by the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings from 5-0 down with 12 minutes left in the third period to beat the Edmonton Oilers in 1982. I just did a Biofile last week with former Kings star Bernie Nicholls who said that was his strangest NHL game and that his team got two goals on a 5-minute power play, then three more, before ultimately winning in overtime. The Kings eventually won the series.
That was a stunner but not quite on the level of Isner and Mahut.
Isner vs. Mahut is incomparable
Scoop Malinowski · June 20, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I like the fact that Isner said he and Mahut became great friends. They keep in contact, even 2-3 times a week. Just a wonderful story in so many ways.
Dan Markowitz · June 21, 2011 at 1:08 am
Be a bit of an anti-climatic match if one were to win in straight sets. But that match does stand out on its own. Doesn’t necessarily need a sequel.
Scoop Malinowski · June 21, 2011 at 5:51 pm
I hope they do their own exhibitions someday. They are forever linked, like Agassi-Sampras, McEnroe-Borg, Rafa-Roger, etc.