LONGEST DAY FOR MARATHON SCUD
The Age
July 3, 2000
Mark Philippoussis was trailing Sjeng Schalken 0-1 in the fifth set of their third-round Wimbledon epic when Tim Henman walked on to centre court to play Hicham Arazi. By the time Henman had finished, Philippoussis and Schalken were still slugging away at 16-16 in what was to be the longest final set at Wimble- don in the 32 years of open tennis. "I just said to Philippoussis, 'What took you so long? I played my match in one set of yours'," Henman later joked with his imminent round-of- 16 opponent. "He was just happy to get through it, and rightly so. I hear he was always behind in the fifth. To keep serving to stay in the match and eventually come through it, I'm sure it's a big confidence-booster." At that moment, neither wise-cracks nor confidence were at the forefront of the weary Philippoussis mind. He had just fought for one minute more than five hours to win by far the longest match of his life 4-6, 6-3, 6-7 (7-9), 7-6 (7-4), 20-18. The last, exhausting, set took two hours 15 minutes. "Obviously I wasn't laughing. I was bleeding, blood on my shorts," Philippoussis said, having grazed his elbow diving,' `Felt like I'd just been punched to death for five hours." New coach Mike DePalmer and fitness trainer Gavin Hopper walked into the locker room for the post- mortem, and hard and as beneficial as the new Philippoussis regime seems to be, showed some sympathy for the 23-year-old, who admits he has not always prepared as thoroughly as he might. "My head was on the ground. My arm was dripping," he recalled. "They looked at me and said: `A late hit'. I said: `Light, too'." So it was agreed. Understandably, too, for Phiippoussis returns to centre court tonight for the first time since retiring with a knee injury 12 months ago while leading Pete Sampras by a set and holding a break point. Waiting there this time will be Henman, the adored young man from Oxford who has carried the British hopes into the semi-finals for the past two years, only to be denied by Sampras both times. As a result, Fred Perry in 1936 remains the last homegrown men's singles cham- pion, and naturally the hype is threatening to burst into fully grown Henmania - if only the England cricket team did not insist on sharing the national sporting limelight through such a rare and dramatic lest win on a Wimbledon weekend. Still, Philippoussis holds a 3-1 career advantage, and has not lost to Henman since 1996. The pair have yet to play on grass, or in front of a crowd so parochial that the punters begin chanting Henman's name as soon as he puts his racquet bag down. "Obviously he loves it here," Philippoussis said. "He's going to get a lot of support. But I love it here, too. I'm expecting to go out there and win. I know what I'm capable of doing, and I've come here to win this." Henman is naturally hoping Philippoussis will be tired, but also remembers Schalken supposedly softening up Jim Courier in another marathon fifth set in last year's third round, before the superfit Courier "came straight back to play a really tough match against me". Henman says he expects nothing less from Philippoussis, who credits his tougher training schedule with his ability to last so well against the efficient and unlucky Schalken. "It's unbelievable it didn't fall my way," the Dutchman said. "It could have fallen both ways. But I actually had last year the same match against Courier 14-12 (including two match points and post-match treatment for dehydration). "I also did nothing wrong, I played my game. I think Wimbledon doesn't want to have me in the fourth round so far." The record-breaking match could easily could have been over about a dozen games earlier. The first break point of the set came in the 17th (yes 17th) game, when the 53rd-ranked Schalken came up with a miraculous sliced backhand pass at full stretch. "I was going to cry," Philippoussis said later. "I couldn't believe that thing went in." Perhaps still unsettled, Philippoussis immediately found him- self down 0-30 in the next game. Then, the Flip of a year or two ago, or even the one without the experience of a pressure-filled away win over Cedric Pioline on the opening day of a Davis Cup final, may well have thought about hoisting the white flag. Instead, the man whose rented house had been visited pre-match by DePalmer's former charge Boris Becker, hung on to level at 9-9. Indeed, Philippoussis, who can be so risky on the double-fault front and had the disadvantage of serving second throughout the decider, did not face a break point in an astonishing fifth-set display of what an envious Schalken called "unbelievable bombs". "I couldn't believe he was hitting his second serve so hard and so precise on the lines. Sometimes he misses them, if he feels pressure, but he kept on making them. That's why he won." In the end there were 44 aces, two short of Goran Ivanisevic's Wimble- don record, compared with Schalken's 30. Yet Philippoussis was almost straight-faced when he said his tally was slightly disappointing considering his personal best previously stood at 42 - in three sets. Never is he likely to play a longer match, for this one was the longest in a single day at Wimbledon since the open era began. Pancho Gonzales outlasted Charlie Pasarell in five hours 12 minutes in the 1969 first round, hut it was a contest split over an audience that included former Australian greats Rod Layer, Neale Fraser, Margaret Court and Tony Roche and the 83-game duration was the most at Wimbledon since the tiebreak was introduced in 1970. It was finally over on the first match point, soon after 8pm, and although Philippoussis says he has always considered himself a fighter, the evidence is slowly mounting to convince everyone else. After defeating Thomas Johansson in a dramatic five-set quarter-final at the 1998 US Open, saving three match points, Nick Philippoussis declared his son, the boy Mark, had become a man. "Must be an old man, now," said Philippoussis junior, grinning sheepishly. The blood was gone from his elbow, a massage awaited and there was a rest day ahead.