It was the Surrey grass-court championships at Surbiton, on a Bank Holiday Monday, and it was all amateur players in those days. It was in the days when you could play the Surrey hard-courts tournament in Sutton in April and the grass courts at Surbiton in May. That would give the Wimbledon Championships an idea that you were still playing OK and help get you into qualifying.
I had played Tony in the first round of Sutton and although we’d had a very good game, he was a hard-court player because he was from what was then Rhodesia. I had lots and lots of break-points and game-points, but in the end he beat me fairly easily. So I thought I was in for a bit of a drubbing when I found out I was playing him in the first round at Surbiton. But the one thing in my favour was that this was on grass, which was not a surface he was that familiar with.
I won the first set on a tie-break – though the tie-breaks in those days were at eight-all, because they’d just introduced them – so I won the first set 9-8. And we got to a situation about 2-2 in the second set, and I started serving.
Judy Dawson – I think she was Judy Taggart at the time – a women’s player who I knew quite well, came on the next court and I nodded to her but carried on serving. And I continued serving … and serving. Then I noticed she was shaking hands on the next court, and I thought: “That’s funny, someone must have been injured”, but she had won 6-0, 6-0 and I was still serving the same game.
The crowds were getting bigger and bigger, and it was just going on and on – it was ridiculous, quite honestly. Tennis players have nightmares about rallies that never end, and that was the sort of game this had become. Whatever he did, I’d do something else, and it just became silly.
I eventually won the game – no one put a clock on it so we don’t know the time it took, but we do know that there were 37 deuces. But because I had been serving so long I wasn’t in any great shape for the rest of the match. He took that set and the next quite quickly, something like 6-3, 6-2 after that.
The personal side of the story was that I had promised my wife and family to take them out for tea down the river. I knew what time I was scheduled to play and had said: “I’ll be home about four o’clock, we’ll go and have a picnic with the kids.” Unfortunately I didn’t come off court until about six o’clock. In those days there were no mobiles, and the public phones were tied up because there were only two.
I knew the boys in the press office, so I said: “Can I come and use your phone? I’ve got to phone the missus and tell her that I’m sorry.” Of course, the phone was held at arm’s length.
I believe the headline on the back page on one of the national papers read “A world record ... and disharmony in the Glass house”.
Then what happened
Glass’s game against Fawcett was entered into the Guinness Book of Records, and remains the longest recorded. He skipped Wimbledon that year but entered again the next year and continued to play and represent Surrey. Glass is now the chairman of Tennis Surrey.