A marathon entry to focus on a marathon match and one of the biggest tests of endurance in sport took place over the last three days at Wimbledon. John Isner and Nicholas Mahut broke most of the tennis records as they spent over 8 hours serving and receiving as they reached 69-68 without a break before Mahut's resolve finally broke and Isner stumbled on into the next round.
Everything else that happened over these two days were overshadowed by the events out on court 18 with no shocks and the likes of Roddick, Venus, Djokovic, Clijsters, Hewitt and Federer all progressing without too much trouble.
On day 4, one person who did try to divert the attentions from court 18 was the Queen who arrived at SW19 with all the pomp and circumstance as she took her seat in the royal box for the first time since Virginia Wade won the Women's singles in 1977. She saw Andy Murray comfortably dispatch Jarkko Nieminen in straight sets. She took her leave of the Championships although Andy Murray will be hoping that she makes a return trip 10 days later.
If she had stayed she would have seen a great fight from Robin Haase on centre court as he made Rafael Nadal work for his win for the first 3 sets pulling out some great serves and some quite remarkable shots to stretch the French Open champion for 5 sets. Another man who was stretched to five sets was Jo Wilfred Tsonga as the exciting Ukrainian Alexandr Dolgopolov made him struggle for his five set win.
Nothing that happened eclipsed the events on court 18 and the most remarkable thing was that Nicholas Mahut was still playing doubles on court 18 as the darkness fell.
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