Wimbledon Report: Day 3

© AELTC

First I want to talk about the women, because they were pretty drama free. Top contenders such as Venus Williams, Kim Clijsters, Justine Henin, and Nadia Petrova all got through in straight sets. 4th seed Jelena Jankovic needed a third set, but also won. Marion Bartoli didn't even need to play any sets to move on with her opponent withdrawing. A few seeds fell though namely 13th seed Shahar Peer, 30th seed Yaroslava Shvedova, and 33rd seed Melanie Oudin.

Now onwards to the men. Sure, we can talk about how Roger Federer looked human two early rounds in a row. We can talk about Novak Djokovic, Andy Roddick, and Tomas Berdych moving through routinely or even about how lucky Lleyton Hewitt was that his opponent retired in the third set. We can even lament the loss of 7th seed Nikolay Davydenko in straight sets.

But it was all about those matches that went the distance. Jurgen Melzer, Albert Montanes, and Philipp Kohlschreiber had to win in the fifth set with the latter winning 9-7. Sounds tough, right? Not even. In a continuation of their suspended first round match yesterday, Thiemo De Bakker and Santiago Giraldo had to play their final set today. The fifth set score? A whopping 16-14 with De Bakker winning.

© AELTC

And yet that was nothing compared to what transpired on Court 18 today. John Isner and Nicolas Mahut's first round match was also suspended yesterday due to bad light. They played their fifth set today... and play... and play... and play. It went on for so long (10 hours total, 7 hours just for this final set), with both guys solid on their serve, they had to suspend their match a second time due to bad light! They stopped it at 59-59. That's just unreal. Of course they broke all kinds of records: longest tennis match ever, most games played, longest set, etc. Both players even broke the old record for most aces in a match (78) by about 20 aces. Epic. I feel so sorry for the one of them who will lose tomorrow.

Xan Brooks over at The Guardian live-blogged the entire day, but you should really read his humorous take on the epic Isner-Mahut match starting at 4:05pm. Zombies!