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Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

news.bbc.co.uk

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Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#11

Post by jamiequint »

bmm6o wrote: post #9

We were just talking about the overtime rules of various sports at lunch today. Tennis has (to me) one of the fairest systems. The sport is aided by the fact that every serve onto the court ends in a point being scored. Basketball is also pretty high up there on the fairness scale. NFL football is terrible (we'll have to see how the new rules play out); college football is much better (but not perfect). Soccer and ho…

At least the NHL drops shootouts during the playoffs. They are a rare enough occurrence during the regular season that they probably don't have too much of an effect on fairness in terms of their effect on the end-of-season standings.

Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#13

Post by dooshydoo »

rjett wrote: post #10

After a match this long, I would bet heavily that whoever wins will lose their next match. I wonder how much odds-makers will adjust odds in the next round because of this.

No doubt for more than just fatigue. There's a reason most of the longer matches occur between lower-ranked players; neither opponent has the mental fortitude to change strategy accordingly. Not to be mean, I do concede that Isner and Mahut both have heart to fight for 7 plus hours, but this wouldn't happen between Federer and Nadal because they learn and adapt during a match, not just go tit for tat. Both of these guys serve very well, but return very averagely.

Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#15

Post by JacobAldridge »

dman wrote: post #6

This should be the new Energizer ad.

Definitely. One will be a first round loser, and the eventual winner will likely lose the next match and be paid as a second round loser. The least that can be done is some sponsorship deal for both of them.

Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#16

Post by sdesol »

bmm6o wrote: post #9

We were just talking about the overtime rules of various sports at lunch today. Tennis has (to me) one of the fairest systems. The sport is aided by the fact that every serve onto the court ends in a point being scored. Basketball is also pretty high up there on the fairness scale. NFL football is terrible (we'll have to see how the new rules play out); college football is much better (but not perfect). Soccer and ho…

As my soccer friend explained things to me. After playing regulation time and extra time, your body just can't take it anymore. Adding additional time until somebody scores would be futile in his opinion.

Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#17

Post by ugh »

bmm6o wrote: post #9

We were just talking about the overtime rules of various sports at lunch today. Tennis has (to me) one of the fairest systems. The sport is aided by the fact that every serve onto the court ends in a point being scored. Basketball is also pretty high up there on the fairness scale. NFL football is terrible (we'll have to see how the new rules play out); college football is much better (but not perfect). Soccer and ho…

It’s just that fair is not necessarily the same as good. The nerve wrecking, random and unfair nature of penalty shootouts is very much part of soccer.

This is not to say that every sport should have some sort of very arbitrary and unfair mechanism. I quite like tennis, it’s just to say that not everyone might think that fair is always a synonym for good.

Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#18

Post by rjett »

dooshydoo wrote: post #13
rjett wrote: post #10

After a match this long, I would bet heavily that whoever wins will lose their next match. I wonder how much odds-makers will adjust odds in the next round because of this.

No doubt for more than just fatigue. There's a reason most of the longer matches occur between lower-ranked players; neither opponent has the mental fortitude to change strategy accordingly. Not to be mean, I do concede that Isner and Mahut both have heart to fight for 7 plus hours, but this wouldn't happen between Federer and Nadal because they learn and adapt during a match, not just go tit for tat. Both of these g…

Except Isner is not a low ranked player. He's no 23 in the world. Granted, his biggest weapon is his huge serve and this is his main advantage. I don't think all of the top players are as versatile as you propose. Even "versatile" players fall back to their strengths when they go through these five set marathon matches. Look no further than the 2008 Wimbeldon final where Nadal battled Federer for almost 5 hours and eeked out the fifth set 9-7. At the time, commentators were claiming this to be the greatest tennis match ever.

Re: Wimbledon 2010: Epic halted at 59-59 in fifth set

#19

Post by roshanr »

What was also interesting and (probably more relevant to HN) were the scoreboard failures. The on-court scoreboard stopped at 47-47 and had to be shut down. The MatchTracker on the official website reset at 50-50 and at the end displayed 9-9 instead of 59-59. I wonder how many other online scoreboards failed and how many were equal to the task.

Those edge cases that you never expect to occur sometimes do occur. On the online scoreboard, you would think that they should have at least successfully gone to 99-99 (after that, they'd run out of physical space on the flash UI). But I suspect that for whatever reason, somebody set a hard limit at 50. I'd be curious to see if they fix it by tomorrow when play resumes.

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