Instead of twiddling my thumbs waiting for this afternoon’s Federer/Roddick encounter, I looked around for some detail regarding the longest tennis matches ever played at Wimbledon. In so doing, I came across this thread on a tennis forum which offers some fascinating data on the shortest matches ever played.
Taking no credit whatsoever for relaying the information, I cull from it the following gems.
(1) The shortest Wimbledon final of all time was played in 1881. Willie Renshaw defeated the Rev. John T. Hartley 6-1, 6-1, 6-0 in only 37 minutes.
(2) The Wimbledon record book allegedly shows that R.F. Doherty beat his brother, H.L. Doherty, in the 1898 final in only 55 minutes … but the match is supposed to have gone a full five sets. The scoreline reads 6-3, 6-3, 2-6, 5-7, 6-1. That’s equivalent to about 73 seconds per game. As one of the posters intimates, that is practically inconceivable. In the current game, it takes some players more than 73 seconds to prepare to serve the ball.
(3) The shortest ever Wimbledon Mens champion was Henri Cochet at 5’ 6".
This is a little exaggerated, but 30 - 40 seconds is common (and against the rules). However, the TV coverage was showing the times of some of Roddick and Federer’s service games. Roddick had one service game that lasted 54 seconds.
I was hoping Murray would win but in all honesty I didn’t think he would.
If he had however. I’d have been quite prepared to have been slung in a Chicago police holding cell there to be savagely rogered by a 6’ 2" trucker from Wichita named Steve
Is that Casey Affleck sitting by Andy Roddick’s wife?
By the way, I’m glad to see Pete Sampras there as well. I wasn’t sure if he’d show up, but he walked in a bit late. So they are now playing in front of(I’ll rank them on how nervous it would make me):
Federer & Roddick got to 5-5 pretty quickly in 25 minutes, but a 73 seconds average for 45 games is a match I would really like to have seen. Just to observe the mechanics of it.
I hope he can, but that’s devastating. I like Roger a lot and am not so much cheering against him, but I would love to see Andy prove that he is able to do this.
It’s going to take a miracle to defeat Roger, now. No matter what, I really think Andy is showing that he is up there with Roger and Nadal in terms of quality play.
He deserves a lot of credit as a great American player. I also respect that he plays Davis Cup, something that he will remember winning for the rest of his life.
Roddick has been holding up really well after that devastating second-set tie-break loss. I can definitely see him hanging in there and pulling off an upset considering that Federer has been unable to break his serve yet.
2 sets all! You would have to say Roddick is the favorite in the final set. He has broken Federer twice and hasn’t been broken yet. And no tie-breaks in the fifth set.