What do you do when
John Isner is on you
, from his two-meter-eight-centimeter watchtower? What to do when you modify the game conditions, prevent, thanks to its first impact, the ball from going through the tape more than once, or obtain a response so warm that it allows you to define in the open field? It does not matter that he has just turned 36 and that he has fallen to 39th place in the ranking, that this was his first tournament on clay this season. He added 32 direct aces against
Roberto Bautista
, in the round of 32, where he saved a match point. They were 29 in the round of 16 against
Andrey Rublev
, another of those headed for the wall. And 18 those subscribed against
Dominic Thiem.
It is convenient not to be distracted when you play it with the Greensboro giant, who had found in the height of Madrid a fertile space for his proposal, not the most attractive on the circuit, as he himself admits, but sometimes highly effective.
He dressed in
Job
Thiem, resisted and knew how to wait for his opportunity, until consummating the second of his breaks in the ninth game of the third set and then endorsing it with his serve.
He won 3-6, 6-3 and 6-4, in one hour and 55 minutes, and this Saturday he will play the semifinals of the Mutua Madrid Open against the winner of the match between
Rafael Nadal
and
Alexander Zverev
.
The longest match in history
The Austrian suffered, in a slipstream since he lost his serve at the dawn of the match, a victim of that constant pressure to which Isner subjects his opponents when he is in vein. The North American is not only about service, okay, but he would not have made a career in this sport without having a weapon of mass destruction on the field. Remember the most famous of your battles, that first round of Wimbledon that will be 11 years old. It was 11 hours and five minutes spread over three days that he invested to beat
Nicolas Mahut
, leaving 113
aces
in the statistics.
Thiem, who also chose Madrid to debut this season on the surface, found himself again with the rope around his neck in the fifth game of the second set, where he had to face four
break points
.
At any point in the game, when Isner is on the other side of the net, whatever the surface, seeing one's own service fizzle takes on an air of tragedy.
The Austrian, a finalist in 2017, came out of the trance and it was he who went blank next, rent enough to equal one set.
Little by little, Isner lost his touch.
Patient, right when the door was opened again, Thiem put his head in his fourth consecutive semifinal in Madrid.
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