TennisVideo

This Is What Happens When You Cramp Up During An Insanely Long Tennis Rally

Few events in tennis can suck you in quite like a long rally. Sure, amazing winners are nice, but they come and go immediately. Great rallies put you on edge and keep you there for as long as they continue. It’s not even about quality tennis so much as quality drama – who’s going to screw up? How long can they handle going on like this? It’s a bundle of mental pressure in tennis form, the zenith of the mano-a-mano nature of the sport.

But the longer these rallies drag on, the more they become physical grinds, too. You’re running all over the place to hit a ball as hard as you can with no break in the action. It’s not easy. And when you start cramping up in the middle of an especially long rally, then it’s beyond tough. At that point, it just hurts. Ask Grigor Dimitrov, after one particularly exhausting point against Richard Gasquet at the French Open yesterday. Or better yet, just look at him:

And Gasquet didn’t get off scot-free, either: after he finished things off, he threw up. It was worth it for Gasquet in the end, though: he won the match in four sets and moved on to the tournament’s third round. We feel bad for Dimitrov, though: all that cramping, he couldn’t even walk – and for his trouble, he loses that point and the match. Long rallies are compelling – they can also be pretty cruel. Here’s the full version of the rally that led to all that vomiting and crawling: