In the end, 6-foot-9 Isner wasn't standing tall

PARIS -- This, then, is who John Isner is for now: The Marathon Man of Tennis, the guy who plays and plays and plays, for hours on end, until the last set seems interminable.

At Wimbledon two years ago, he won 70-68 in the fifth, the longest set and match in tennis history. At Roland Garros on Thursday, as afternoon gave way to evening, the 10th-seeded American lost 7-6 (2), 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 18-16 to Paul-Henri Mathieu of France in the second round, a five-hour, 41-minute test of stamina and attention span.

This one goes in the books as the second-longest match, by time, in French Open history.

"I just didn't get it done. I felt like I got caught in patterns that weren't ideal for me," said a sombre Isner. "I wasn't going for my shots at certain points in the match, and that comes from a little bit of a lack of confidence."

If the 6-foot-9 Isner is going to become more than a novelty act, he needs to win encounters like Thursday's, and not because of the duration but because it was a first-week Grand Slam match against a player ranked 261st.

After finally converting his seventh match point -- Isner never had one -- an emotional Mathieu thanked the partisan crowd in the main stadium for willing him to victory. Their sing-song choruses of "Po-lo! Po-lo!" -- the French equivalent of "Paulie" -- and roars of approval rang out after pretty much every point he won down the stretch.

"I dug deep," said the 30-year-old Mathieu, who hadn't played in a major tournament since the 2010 U.S. Open because of a left knee injury that forced him off tour all of last year. "I was away from the courts for quite a while, and I came back to live moments like this."

He helped provide easily the most intrigue on a day that featured straight-set wins for defending champions Rafael Nadal and Li Na. But it also ended after 9 p.m., forcing organizers to postpone until today the match involving Maria Sharapova that was supposed to follow on Court Philippe Chatrier.

About 10 hours earlier in that stadium, it appeared a man seeded even higher than Isner would be on his way out of the tournament: No. 4 Andy Murray's back was so painful he could barely move.

Thanks in large part to a couple of massages from a trainer, Murray began to feel better. He went on to beat 48th-ranked Jarkko Nieminen 1-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 and reach the third round at Roland Garros for the fifth consecutive year.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 1, 2012 $sourceSection0