In 2010, two players entered Wimbledon’s Court 18 and played the longest match in tennis history. It didn’t end for three days and the electronic scoreboard broke before they did

John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played Wimbledon’s longest match, lasting 11 hours over three days/ Image: Olympics.com The tennis match that lasted 11 hours and five minutes, spanned three days, produced 183 games and finally broke the electronic scoreboard, sounds more like a made-for-TV story than something that actually happened at Wimbledon. But that’s exactly what happened when American John Isner and France’s Nicolas Mahut met in the first round of the 2010 Championship. Their fifth set alone lasted eight hours and 11 minutes, longer than some entire professional matches, with both players repeatedly serving to stay alive in a match that seemed to have no natural end. By the time Isner finally won 70-68, the match had become a record that remains intact and a sporting absurdity that later inspired HBO mockumentaries.

A 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, and neither could have imagined that they were about to spend three days playing one of the most unusual matches in tennis history.The opening four sets were already a serious match, Isner won the first 6-4 before Mahut equalized with a set 6-3. Mahut then took the third 7-6, only for Isner to win the fourth by the same score to force a deciding set.There, the match became something completely different.With the final set requiring a player to win in two clear games, neither could produce a decisive break. They held serve again and again as the score climbed through the 20s, 30s and 40s, with the match already far beyond anything Wimbledon had seen before.Play was originally suspended due to fading natural light after the first four sets on 22 June. The players returned the following day, but the fifth set still could not be completed and darkness again forced the match to be suspended.They returned for the third day on June 24, still locked together.By then, even the electronic scoreboard had effectively conceded defeat. He stopped working at 47-47 in the fifth set because he was not programmed to score that high.

70-68: a fifth set that became its own match

The numbers from the decision set are difficult to understand, even when written down.The fifth set lasted eight hours and 11 minutes and featured 138 games, with the players producing an astonishing 215 aces over the course of the match: Isner hit 112 and Mahut 103.They also held serve for 168 consecutive games during the match, while Mahut had to serve to stay alive 63 times.There were only three service breaks in the entire match.Finally, after hours of holding serve, Isner finally won the 137th game of the fifth set to move ahead before breaking Mahut in the following game to end the marathon at 70-68.The complete score was 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68, with the match lasting 665 minutes, or 11 hours and five minutes.The final set itself was longer than the longest baseball game on record, lasting eight hours and six minutes.The total of 183 games played was also 71 more than the previous highest total at Wimbledon, while the 138 games in the fifth set were 26 more than any other match.Isner and Mahut also eclipsed the previous record for most aces in a match, which stood at 78, with a total of 215.“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Isner said afterward, as the scale of what happened summed up his prediction that “Nothing like this will ever happen again.”

Neither player was quite the same after that

The physical demands of the match were immediately apparent.Isner returned to the court for his second-round match against Dutchman Thiem de Bakker but lost in straight sets, with the aftermath of the three-day battle clearly still hanging over him.Mahut’s defeat was equally extraordinary in its own way. Despite the loss, it produced one of the most remarkable individual performances in tennis history, with both players setting records for points, games and aces that are unlikely to be approached again.However, the attraction of the match was not only in the final score, as as the fifth set moved to 50-50, both players were visibly exhausted while continuing the physical exertion required to keep the match alive. Mahut repeatedly chased balls at full range while Isner visibly struggled between points, but neither could find the small error that would end the match for good.The fact that it was an outdoor first-round match made the spectacle even more special, as two players who weren’t among the sport’s biggest global stars suddenly became the center of attention as word spread of what was happening on court 18.The match was so extraordinary that Wimbledon later commemorated it with a plaque outside court 18.

Plaque commemorating the Isner–Mahut match on court 18 at Wimbledon/Wikipedia

Isner and Mahut met again in the first round of Wimbledon in 2011, but there was no repeat marathon and Isner won in straight sets.

The record changed tennis

The Isner-Mahut marathon was made possible by then-current Grand Slam rules that required the final set to continue until one player had built a two-game advantage.This system has since changed at major tournaments, making another 70-68 deciding set increasingly difficult to imagine.Wimbledon now uses a tie-break when the final set reaches 12-12, while the Australian Open uses a super tie-break from the first to 10 points at 6-6. The French Open also retained the principle of precedence in its deciding sets.Isner himself later found himself at the center of another Wimbledon marathon. In the 2018 semi-finals, he lost to South African Kevin Anderson 7–6, 6–7, 7–6, 4–6, 24–26 after six hours and 36 minutes.The match became the fourth-longest in tennis history and the second-longest at a Grand Slam, but repeated marathon matches contributed to Wimbledon eventually establishing a tie-break in the fifth set.Other records remain far behind Isner’s and Mahut’s mark. The longest Grand Slam final of the Open Era was the 2012 Australian Open final, where Novak Djokovic defeated 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 Jean Hepner 6-4, 7-6 at the 1984 Central Fidelity Banks International.The longest doubles match came at the 2013 Davis Cup, when Tomáš Berdych and Lukáš Rosol beat Switzerland’s Stanislas Wawrinka and Marco Chiudinelli 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-7, 24-22 after seven hours and two minutes.None came close to the 11-hour, three-day ordeal in south-west London.

From Wimbledon absurdity to HBO

Ultimately, the story went 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 an impossibly long Grand Slam match.Samberg later recalled watching the actual Isner-Mahut match with writer Murray Miller and joked that someone should make a movie about a tennis match that just never ends.That joke became a 2015 HBO movie that exaggerated the premise to comical extremes, but its starting point was very real: two players, three days, 11 hours and five minutes, 183 games, and a fifth set that reached 70-68 before someone could finally walk off court 18.More than 16 years later, the Isner-Mahut match remains the Guinness World Record holder for the longest professional tennis match ever played.