There’s a certain sense of serenity that can be created through the repetitive rhythm of a sustained rally.

Complete concentration on the approaching ball,  timing your swing and finishing your follow through over and over and over can clean the cobwebs from your consciousness and fine-tune your focus to the point where the distractions of the world around you dissolve distilling the moment to one primary relationship: you and the ball.

In tennis terms, an extended rally seldom lasts longer than the length of a commercial.

Unless, of course, the flying Rossetti Brothers — Angelo and Ettore — identical twin teaching pros from Connecticut happen to be the pair trading shots in which case a calendar can be used to measure their epic exchange that spanned the length of a mini-series.

In a display of tennis tenacity and extraordinary endurance that would make Sisyphus stop his rolling rock and shake his head in sympathy, the Rossetti twins completed the longest sustained rally in American history last summer.

 In a rally that began at 6:31 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday, August 18 and concluded at 5:09 a.m. on Sunday, August 19 the twins hit 19, 490 continuous strokes to surpass the American record of 17,062 strokes set by Rob Peterson, a teaching pro from Texas, and Ray Miller on February 5, 2000.

They fell short of surpassing the Guinness World Record of  24,696 strokes, but in terms of time spent engaged in an exhausting exchange the Rossettis kept the ball in play continuously for 10 hours and 38 minutes without breaks for water, food or the restroom (thanks to the adult diapers both brothers wore in case of emergency).

“Thankfully, we didn’t have to use them,” Angelo says.

What would compel two 38-year-old brothers, who both have families, both routinely work six days a week and are so busy (Angelo has a habit of carrying his checkbook and bills in his car so he can pay bills while stopped at red lights) that time is the one thing neither has to waste to expend so much time and energy pursuing an endurance record?

In a word: love.

Love for tennis, love for a deceased friend, Scott Wilson, a former teaching pro who taught both brothers tennis and died at age 40 of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and for their support of the Tim and Tom Gullikson Foundation, which aids and supports brain tumor patients and their families.

The Rossettis were never alone on court: they carried those causes with them in turning their bid for the world record into a fundraiser for ALS and the Gullikson Foundation.

“Scott Wilson was a very good friend of ours who taught us a lot about tennis and life and he passed away at only 40 of ALS,” Angelo says. “He was the head tennis professional at North Haven Health and Racquet and that’s where I taught a while back. We’ve done several clinics with Tom Gullikson and the Gulliksons and the Bryan brothers have always been inspirations for us. So we came up with the idea of using tennis — something we both love — and of trying for the world record as a way to  raise money and awareness for ALS and the Gullikson foundation, two causes we love and support. We had a lot of people either pledge flat-rate donations or pledge a penny a shot and that adds up when you’re hitting 19,490 shots.”

 They practiced for their record-setting attempt at Hamden High School and the enormity of the task hit home the moment they hit the net in that first practice rally.

“I remember after about 240 strokes, maybe 12 minutes, we hit the net,” Angelo recalls. “And I remember at that moment thinking ‘Oh no, this is going to be a lot tougher than we thought.’ ”

The degree of difficult rose dramatically on the day of the record attempt due to the demands of the Rossetti brothers’ schedules.

History had to wait a while as the twins first taught tennis all day long, then played a doubles match and then they took their shot at history.

On August 18, the 38-year-old identical twins and USPTA-certified pros started their day at 9 a.m., conducted a day-long series of teaching clinics at Milford Indoor Tennis in Milford, Connecticut as part of the USPTA’s Play Tennis Across America festivities, followed by playing a doubles exhibition against former Wimbledon semifinalist Tim Mayotte and teaching pro Isidro Martinez then the brothers, who didn’t start playing competitive tennis until their junior year of high school, strapped on a pair of adult diapers, lined up bottles of Gatorade and power bars beyond the doubles alley and proceeded to hit their way into history.

Actually, their first attempt came to a frustratingly lengthy finish.

After 2,745 shots, the brothers hit the net and had to start all over again a couple of hours after their initial attempt. They took a bathroom break and returned to the court to begin their long night’s journey into morning.

“Mentally, that was very difficult,” Angelo says. “Because you have to start all over again and in your mind you’re basically starting from negative 3,000 because we had hit almost 3,000 straight shots so that was discouraging but once we got back to zero we felt a lot better.” 

That is, of course, until they began to feel the piercing pain gnawing at their joints. The brothers tried to hit forehand-to-forehand for their entire rally to minimize the amount of movement required to set the record. Soon, the sheer repetition of swinging their Prince racquets and absorbing the shock of the ball began to batter their bodies.

 Ettore’s right wrist throbbed as if it had spent all night used as as the chew toy for a rabid Rottweiler while Angelo’s aching feet made it difficult to move.

“We only hit two backhands the entire rally,” Angelo says. “We hit 19,488 forehands and our thing was ’Let’s try to hit forehand to forehand.’ “ 

The ball took an even bigger battering than the brothers, who actually belted the yellow felt almost completely off the ball leaving slivers of felt at their feet and a nearly bald ball that looked like a white-ish, grey spaldeen. At the end with the ball almost completely devoid of felt the ball would accelerate and suddenly spin wildly due to the diminished felt. When the lightly-colored sphere hit the white service line tracking the ball was about as easy as picking up a piece of confetti covered with white-out during a snow storm.

“My brother kept barking out ‘Don’t hit it in the middle,’ because the ball turned a white-ish kind of color so it would spin wildly at times because the felt was gone but if it hit the line you couldn’t pick up the ball from the line,” says Angelo. 

By the early hours of the morning, sleep deprivation, food deprivation (though the brothers would lob high shots to each other so each could run to the sideline and munch on a piece of power bar returning before the ball bounced twice) and overwhelming fatigue had reduced Angelo’s peripheral vision to the point where the court looked hazy and he felt as if he was hitting shots trapped in a darkened tunnel. 

“I equate the last two hours to driving in the middle of the night when you’re completely exhausted and your eyes keep shutting and you keep shaking your head, turn the radio up and roll the windows down just to try to keep yourself alert and going,” Angelo says.

Ettore had an equally visceral view:

“It felt like being trapped in an insane asylum,” he confided in his brother. 

The rally ended when Ettore’s shot hit deeper in the court, Angelo, hitting off his back-foot, lifted a reply that hit the top of the tape and settled on his side of the court.

“I just misjudged the pace and he hit it a little deeper and I got surprised and then leaning back and hitting it off my back foot the rally ended with the ball literally hitting  the top of the net and rolling back,” Angelo says. “There were two disparate feelings: one of complete disappointment that we didn’t break the record and the other complete relief it was over. I was so exhausted and I love coffee and smelled the coffee and wanted coffee so bad.”

When his shot hit the tape, Angelo collapsed to the court, rolled to his back and stared straight up at the ceiling.

“I could have fallen asleep on the court, I was so exhausted,” he says.

Coming close to breaking the world record has not dented the twins’ determination or their appetite.

On August 9 they plan to go for the record again with all proceeds from this fund-raising, record-breaking attempt benefiting four charities:

1.  The Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation
2. ALS Association
3. Save the Children
4. Rally for the Cure

“It’s daunting because we know how difficult it is, but I’ll be honest with you: we will continue to do it once a year until we break the record,” Angelo says. “And I don’t want to just break the record — I want to blow it away. It’s like the old saying about eating an elephant: if you set out to eat an elephant you wouldn’t try to eat it all at once. You try to eat it in small bites. The same is true of breaking this record: you do it one shot at a time.”