At 4.47 on the afternoon of Thursday 24 June 2010, on Wimbledon's modest Court 18, the American John Isner hit a backhand passing shot to win a first-round tennis match by a scoreline that still looks like a misprint: 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68. The contest against France's Nicolas Mahut had lasted eleven hours and five minutes, spread across three days. The fifth set alone ran eight hours and eleven minutes — longer, on its own, than any other match in the history of the sport. At one point the electronic scoreboard simply stopped, frozen at 47–47, because its software had never been programmed to imagine such numbers.
It began unremarkably. Isner, the 6ft 9in 23rd seed, faced Mahut, a serve-and-volleying qualifier ranked outside the top hundred — a man who had only reached the main draw by winning his second qualifying match 24–22 in the third set, as if warming up for the absurd. They started at 6.13pm on Tuesday 22 June. Fading light halted them after four sets. They resumed on Wednesday afternoon and played one set for the entire remainder of the day — through the evening news, through every record in the book, until darkness stopped play again at 59–59, the crowd chanting "We want more" as the players staggered off. Wimbledon's grass had never hosted anything like it; by happy coincidence the Queen made her first visit to the Championships since 1977 that same week, though she watched from Centre Court while history ground on next door.
The numbers that broke the book
The statistics remain scarcely believable. The two men struck 216 aces between them — 113 by Isner, 103 by Mahut, both obliterating the previous match record. Isner won 92 games to Mahut's 91 — yet it was the loser who won more points overall, 502 to 478, a classic pub-quiz trap. The previous longest match in history, six hours and 33 minutes at the 2004 French Open, was surpassed while the fifth set still had hours to run. Through it all one man never left his chair: the Swedish umpire Mohamed Lahyani called every point of all eleven hours. When Isner finally converted his fifth match point on the third day — after 65 more minutes of play — the All England Club improvised a ceremony on court, presenting both players and Lahyani with engraved crystal, and later fixed a plaque to Court 18.
Tennis had seen marathons before — most famously in 1969, when the 41-year-old Pancho Gonzales outlasted Charlie Pasarell over 112 games at Wimbledon, a five-hour epic that helped persuade the sport to adopt the tie-break in the first place. But the tie-break had tamed only the first four sets; Wimbledon's final set remained open-ended, a loophole through which Isner and Mahut duly drove an eleven-hour lorry. Both men were examined by medical staff between days; Mahut later described the ordeal in a book, and both admitted the match haunted their sleep for months.
The sequel was crueller than fiction. Isner, barely able to move, lost his second-round match in straight sets in 74 minutes. And when the draw for the 2011 Championships was made a year later, out of 128 names it paired Isner and Mahut in the first round again — odds that made statisticians giggle. Isner won efficiently, and the two men, bound together for life, became genuine friends and occasional doubles partners.
The rule it eventually killed
Wimbledon had always refused a final-set tie-break, trusting that deciders would resolve themselves. Isner–Mahut strained that faith, and Isner himself kept testing it: in 2018 he lost a Wimbledon semi-final to Kevin Anderson 26–24 in the fifth, a six-and-a-half-hour slog that wrecked the tournament schedule. Weeks later Wimbledon announced a tie-break at 12–12 in the final set, first applied in 2019 — when, fittingly, the men's final itself became the first singles final settled by one, Novak Djokovic edging Roger Federer 13–12 in the fifth. In 2022 all four Grand Slams finally harmonised on a ten-point tie-break at 6–6 in deciders. The consequence is quietly monumental: 70–68 is not just a record, it is a scoreline that the rules of tennis now make impossible. Somewhere in that permanence lies the match's strange beauty — two journeymen of the sport, neither of whom would ever win the title, guaranteed a corner of Wimbledon forever.
Quiz nuggets
- Isner beat Mahut 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68 in the first round of Wimbledon 2010, over three days (22–24 June).
- Total match time was 11 hours 5 minutes; the fifth set alone took 8 hours 11 minutes — longer than any other complete match.
- They hit 216 aces between them (Isner 113, Mahut 103), and umpire Mohamed Lahyani officiated throughout.
- The Court 18 scoreboard froze at 47–47; loser Mahut actually won more points (502 to 478).
- Wimbledon adopted a final-set tie-break at 12–12 in 2019; since 2022 all Grand Slams play a 10-point tie-break at 6–6 in the decider.