June 24, 2010, 15 years ago today: The longest professional tennis match in history concludes at Wimbledon after 11 hours and five minutes, spanning three days. American John Isner and French qualifier Nicolas Mahut had already battled almost three hours in the first-round tilt when they went to the fifth set. Then the deciding set went eight hours and 11 minutes, with Isner finally winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. Yes, the set score was 70-68. The next day, an exhausted Isner would be eliminated in the second round in 74 minutes.
The memorable match was suspended twice due to darkness. Deep into the fifth set on the second day, Isner had four match points at 59-58 but failed to convert, and play was halted at 59-59. On the third day, both players continued to hold serve time after time until Isner finally broke Mahut in Game No. 138. Isner had rocketed 113 aces in the match and Mahut 103. Interestingly enough, the draw the following year placed the duo against each other again, but this time, Isner won in straight sets. Isner also holds the No. 4 spot on the all-time list of longest matches, a six-hour, 36-minute loss to South African Kevin Anderson at Wimbledon in 2018.
The Wimbledon men’s rules at the time stated that in the fifth set, the match would continue past a 6-6 tie until one player was ahead by two games. No tiebreaker. As cool as it was for old-school tennis, the Isner-Mahut match screamed for a rule change. It didn’t happen until 2019, when a 12-12 tie in a deciding fifth set started going to a tiebreaker. Then in 2022, all four Grand Slam tournaments (including Wimbledon) agreed to go to a 10-point tiebreak when the score reaches 6-6.
Isner, by the way, was part of the biggest tennis event ever held in Boise. He was on the U.S. team that faced Serbia in the 2013 Davis Cup quarterfinals in Taco Bell Arena and had the pleasure of facing Novak Djokovic to open the three-day event. Isner, who had always played reasonably well against Djokovic, fell in straight sets after taking him to a tiebreaker in the first set. (Serbia took a 3-1 victory over the U.S. to advance to the Davis Cup quarterfinals.)
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
