June 23 2010 will now go down in infamy as the day John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played the infinity set. Resuming their first round clash tied at two sets all after bad light had stopped play following a fourth set tiebreak, the No.23 seed and the qualifier played 118 unbroken games, splitting the tab 59-59.

At Mahut’s request and the referee’s agreement, play was suspended for bad light, before a winner could be found, at 9.10pm. All rational thought and reason had been suspended long before that. Records have tumbled. The tension was palpable. Both players, no matter what Thursday or the future may hold, will be immortalised. And yet, my prevailing thought throughout a day that will go down in tennis history remained: this would never happen in New York.

Matches at the US Open are decided over the best of three or five tiebreak sets. The US Open is unique among the Grand Slams for adopting the breaker to settle a final set draw. The other Slams have resisted the change, on the grounds that to settle a match – and in some cases a championship, as happened in the 2008 and 2009 men’s finals – with a tiebreak is unfair on the players and fans, and does the game a disservice.

They could not be more wrong. The tiebreak, invented 45 years ago by James Van Alen, is one of the most thrilling aspects of any tennis match – a seven-point shootout that injects urgency and anxiety into a set that had reached stalemate. Breakers have served up some of the finest moments in modern tennis history. With the roof now in place over Centre Court, the Beeb can now retire the worn out copy of Borg and McEnroe’s 34-point mini-epic in the 1980 final. And they’ll never get the chance to replay those two epic splitters from the Federer-Nadal final of 2008.

But more importantly, they ensure that sets run for twelve games. Tiebreaks decide matches in favour of the better player, not simply the better athlete. Sprinters and marathon runners alike race over a set distance. Javelin throwers use a standard weighted spear. Footballers, basketballers, rugby players – in fact, virtually every team sport you care to mention play within a specific timeframe. These are not constraints but constants, complete with adaptations to decide tie scores. Footballers detest penalty shoot-outs, but very few entertain the notion of playing on until somebody scores. Those sports that do go into overtime tend to allow for added or unlimited substitutions. But in a duel, playing to infinity makes little sense.

Tommy Haas, whose third round match against Marin Cilic last year was played over two days after the fifth set ran to 18 games, backed the change. "We should have a tiebreak at 6-all in the fifth. All the Grand Slams should have this. It was getting really dark out there. When he had two match points at 5-6, I was like, 'Great, maybe he's going to finish me off right before we're supposed to stop due to darkness.'”

In their absence, negative tennis is the order of the day, as you’d expect – after all, Mahut served to stay in the match on fifty-five – fifty-five! – successive occasions. Holding serve takes priority, with both men making a decision on whether to step it up or conserve some energy and let a game pass on the basis of the first couple of points for the first forty or so games, and increasingly less inclined to chance anything on return from then on. Sure, it was a tense and exciting few hours, but hardly vintage matchplay – by the end, Isner was, understandably, virtually stationery. But when every point counts, there is no time to sacrifice a rally in favour of self-preservation.

If tiebreaks are good enough for the first four sets, then why not the fifth? It offers players the chance to let their tennis do the talking, and offer the fans pulsating entertainment. It gives players the chance to truly measure their game up against one another, at the end of a contest already hours old. And it leaves both contestants in a fit state to step back out on court to play a match the next day.

Instead, whatever the result tomorrow, both men will be left battered and bruised. One, a shadow of himself with his next match galloping into view; the other heartbroken, forever remembered as a pub quiz curio. Both, perhaps, ultimately left wondering what might have been. As a delirious Isner left the court, an interviewer asked him what he made of it all. “Nothing like this will ever happen again,” he said, “ever.”

In truth, it should not be allowed to.