JOHN Isner was up to his old tricks again yesterday. But even he couldn’t outlast a man from South Africa with no shortage of staying power of his own. Desperate to be remembered for something other than winning the longest match of all time, his three-day, 11-hour epic against Nicolas Mahut back in 2010, Isner will now also be known for being on the losing end of Wimbledon’s second-longest match, delaying the tournament’s most eagerly awaited encounter until after the watershed and who knows putting an end to this tournament’s convention of having no tie-breaker in the fifth set for good.

When both these men, after six hours 36 minutes of this stuff, in a match which finished 7-6 (6), 6-7 (5), 6-7 (9), 6-4, 26-24, agreed that it was time for fifth set tie-breaks, it might just be time for these championships to fall in line with the US Open. But then, considering these two men have won more tie-breaks than everyone else on tour this year, they would say that wouldn’t they?

“I think if you ask the players, when you get stuck in these positions, playing such long matches, it’s very tiring,” said Anderson. “It’s very tough, playing six-and-a-half hours, whatever we were out there for. I personally don’t see the reason not to include it [a fifth set tie-break] now at least at all the slams. I mean, obviously John’s match in 2010, it was ridiculous, I feel like a lot of people were talking about it then. Things didn’t change.

“It’s also tough being out there, listening to some of the crowd,” he added. “Hopefully they appreciated the battle that we faced out there against each other, John and myself. But if you ask most of them, I’m sure they would have preferred to see a fifth-set tiebreaker, too. They’ve paid to see two matches, and they came pretty close to only seeing one match.”

“I feel pretty terrible,” said Isner afterwards. “My left heel is killing me and I have an awful blister on my right foot. I personally think if one person can’t finish the other off before 12-All, then do a tiebreaker there. I think it’s long overdue. I mean, I’m a big part of this discussion, of course.”

No harm to them both but Kevin Anderson versus John Isner in a Wimbledon semi-final? It was like a glimpse at the sport’s dystopian future, or at least it would have been if these twin peaks from the new world weren’t also thirtysomethings who had shown no inkling they could reach this stage in their nine previous visits to this tournament.

While the meeting of 6ft 8in South African and the 6ft 10in American played into the purists’ fears that tennis one day will become a physical freak show, contested by sportsmen such as Isner who could have had a fruitful alternative career in basketball, it was also a throwback to simpler times. Seeing these men battering aces past each other at 140mph was redolent of the 1990s, when the likes of Michael Stich and Richard Krajicek could serve their way to this title. With 54 to Anderson’s 50, aces was at least one category where Isner had the edge.

The rhythm of this match was slow, yet staccato, a grimly fascinating ordeal because the stakes were so high for both men. Having become the first man to break Roger Federer’s serve on Wednesday, we were into the third set by the time Anderson did likewise with the delivery of Isner. But even then he couldn’t consolidate it. The first three sets all went the way of breakers, leaving the American holding a two-one advantage, delighting his demented friend Justin Gimelstob who was responsible for the American earning a warning for on-court coaching.

It wasn’t so much that these two men were incapable of breaking each other’s serve, just that they took two and a half hours to get the hang of it. There were - shock horror - three service breaks in a row as Anderson took the fourth but the real turning point came in a remarkable rally in the game where the South African finally got the conclusive break. He fell on the ground, dropped his racket, but picked it up to play a shot left handed. “When I was younger, I had elbow surgery at a pretty young age. Actually played four or five months just with my left hand.” Such virtuosity demoralised Isner, who knows what Nicolas Mahut felt like this morning.