Isner Scoring Method (ISM)

To create the needed long suffering, serve intense, mind-bending tennis experience, I along with Jason Keck of Allen, Tx. developed the Isner Scoring Method (ISM). The match goes to whoever gets to 70 games, utilizing traditional deuce/advantage scoring to determine the winner of each game. It is played on a traditional tennis court, respecting the size, length, spacing, and height of the lines. The match can be played over days, weeks, months, years, or perhaps, a lifetime. Doesn't matter. What matters is John Isner, Nicolas Mahut, and the epic Wimbledon first round match they finally completed in the summer of 2010. To honor the beforementioned, but ultimately defeated Frenchman from the Parisian suburb town of Boulogne-Billancourt, each 10 game section of the match is referred to as a mahut. Serve is determined by a spin of a volunteer's racquet before each mahut. The other player indicates up or down. The winner serves. The loser gets to pick the side. This happens before every mahut. A mahut ending at 10-0 is called a moullette, the French word for skunk, again honoring Mahut with the inclusion of a French word. A change in sides happens after every odd game throughout the entire match. Each player is awarded two waivers of play (called roddicks) per match. A waiver of play allows the player to cancel a pre-scheduled meeting or call play before a mahut is complete. Injuries, unplanned (or planned) events, and weather qualify for waivers of play. Maintaining a log book is strongly encouraged (noting the general weather conditions, the score of each mahut, the combined Isner match score, and the physical and psychological state of each player). Water should be abundant and proactively shared. Warm ups for each meeting are limited to: 15 and can be reduced to any amount of time upon mutual agreement and may be skipped altogether. Each player should arrive for each meeting with two unbroken (strings included) racquets. Condition of the tennis balls is not monitored and each player is counted upon to deliver trustworthy line calling. There is no appeal process for line calls or scoring errors. The server is responsible for keeping score of each game.  The first player to reach 70 (do not need to win by two) shall receive 2 bottles of cold English-made beer from the other player.                     

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