In 2010, two players took to Court No. 18 at Wimbledon and played the longest match in tennis history. It wasn’t over for three days, and the electronic scoreboard malfunctioned before they finished | International sports news
A tennis match that lasted 11 hours and five minutes, spanned over three days, produced 183 matches, and ultimately smashed the electronic scoreboard, sounds more like a story written for television than one that actually happened at Wimbledon. Yet that is exactly what happened when American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut met in the first round of the 2010 tournament. The fifth set alone lasted eight hours and 11 minutes, longer than some entire professional matches, while both players repeatedly worked to survive a match that seemed to have no natural ending. By the time Isner finally won 70-68, the bout had become an untouched record, a sporting absurdity that later inspired an HBO mockumentary.
The match that refused to end
Isner and Mahut began their first-round match on Court 18 at the All England Club on June 22, 2010, with neither knowing they were about to spend three days playing one of the most extraordinary matches in tennis history.The first four sets were indeed a serious contest, with Isner winning the first set 6-4 before Mahut leveled the set 6-3. Mahut then won the third goal 7-6, but Isner grabbed the fourth goal by the same score to force a deciding set.Here the match became something completely different.Since the final set required a player to win two clear games, neither player was able to achieve the decisive break. They held serve time and time again as the score rose through the 20s, 30s and 40s, and the match was truly far beyond anything Wimbledon had seen before.Play was originally suspended due to fading natural light after the first four sets on June 22. The players returned the next day, but the fifth set was not yet completed, with darkness falling again forcing the match to be halted.They returned for a third day on June 24, still sticking together.By then, even the electronic scoreboard had effectively conceded defeat. He stopped performing at 47-47 in the fifth set because he was not programmed to record such a high score.
70-68: The fifth set becomes its own match
Numbers from the decisive set are difficult to understand even when written.The fifth set lasted eight hours and 11 minutes, and included 138 games, with players serving an astonishing 215 over the entire match: Isner hit 112 and Mahut 103.They also held serve on 168 straight games during the match, while Mahut had to serve to stay alive 63 times.There were only three service breaks in the entire contest.Eventually, after hours of holding serve, Isner finally won the 137th game of the fifth set to take the lead, before breaking Mahut in the next game to end the marathon with a score of 70-68.The full score was 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68, and the match lasted 665 minutes, or 11 hours and five minutes.The final set alone was longer than the longest baseball game on record, which lasted eight hours and six minutes.The total of 183 matches played was also 71 more than the previous highest total at Wimbledon, while the 138 matches in the fifth group were 26 more than any other match.Isner and Mahut also broke the previous record for number of aces in a single match, which was 78 aces, for a total of 215 aces.“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Isner said afterwards, while the magnitude of what happened was summed up by his prediction that “nothing like this will ever happen again.”
Neither player was quite the same after that
The physical demands of the match became immediately apparent.Isner returned to the court to play his second round match against Dutchman Themo De Backer, but he lost in two straight sets, and it is clear that the effects of the three-day battle are still hanging over him.Mahut’s defeat was equally extraordinary in its own way. Despite his loss, he produced one of the most remarkable singles performances in tennis history, with both players setting records for points, matches and serves that were unlikely to be approached again.However, the appeal of the match was not just the final result, because as the fifth set went 50-50, both players were visibly exhausted as they continued to exert the physical effort required to keep the contest alive. Mahut chased down shots again and again, while Isner visibly struggled between the points, but neither could find the little lapse that ultimately ended the contest.The fact that it was a first-round match on an outdoor court made the scene even more bizarre, as two players who were not among the world’s biggest sports stars suddenly became the center of attention as news spread about what was happening on Court 18.The match was so exceptional that Wimbledon later commemorated it with a plaque outside Court 18.
Memorial plaque for the Isner-Mahut match on Court 18 at Wimbledon/Wikipedia
Isner and Mahut met again in the first round at Wimbledon in 2011, but there was no repeat marathon, with Isner winning in straight sets.
The record changed tennis
The Isner-Mahut marathon was possible due to the Grand Slam rules in place at the time, which required the final set to continue until one player achieved a two-game advantage.This system has since changed in the major leagues, making it increasingly difficult to envision a 70-68 playoff set.Wimbledon now uses a tie-break when the final set reaches 12-12, while the Australian Open uses a first-to-10-point super tie-break at 6-6. The French Open also retained the advantage set principle in its deciding sets.Isner himself later found himself at the heart of another Wimbledon marathon. In the semi-finals of the 2018 edition, he lost to South African Kevin Anderson 7-6, 6-7, 7-6, 4-6, 24-26 after six hours and 36 minutes.That match became the fourth-longest match in tennis history and the second-longest at a Grand Slam, but repeated marathon matches contributed to Wimbledon eventually providing a fifth-set tiebreaker.Other records remain far behind Isner and Mahut’s mark. The longest Grand Slam final in the Open era was the 2012 Australian Open final, where Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7, 7-5 after five hours and 53 minutes.The longest women’s singles match lasted six hours and 31 minutes, with Vicki Nelson defeating Jan Hebner 6-4, 7-6 at the 1984 Fidelity Central Banks International Championship.The longest doubles match came in the 2013 Davis Cup, when Tomas Berdych and Lukas Rosol beat Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka and Marco Chiudinelli 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-7, 24-22 after seven hours and two minutes.None of them came close to the 11-hour, three-day ordeal in southwest London.
From the absurdity of Wimbledon to HBO
The story eventually moved beyond tennis.The 2010 marathon helped inspire HBO’s “7 Days in Hell,” a mockumentary starring Andy Samberg and Kit Harington about two fictional tennis players locked in a long Grand Slam match.Samberg later recalled watching the real-life Isner-Mahut match with writer Murray Miller, and he joked that someone should make a movie about a tennis match that never ends.That joke became the 2015 HBO movie, which exaggerated the premise to the point of extreme comedy, but the starting point was very real: two players, three days, 11 hours and five minutes, 183 games and a fifth set that went to 70-68 before anyone could finally get off the court of 18.More than 16 years later, the Isner-Mahut match remains the Guinness World Record holder for the longest professional tennis match ever.
