Isner vs Mahut: Three Days, One Match, No Way Out

Court 18 at Wimbledon is not where history is supposed to happen. It is an outer court with a few rows of seats, the kind of place where seeded players work through the first round and nobody outside the family stays for the fifth set. On Tuesday, June 22, 2010, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut walked onto it for a first-round match. They walked off on Thursday.

A Nothing Match on Paper

Isner was a 6-foot-10 American seeded 23rd, built around one of the biggest serves in the game. Mahut was a French qualifier, which meant he had already won three matches just to get into the main draw. Two big servers on grass. Everyone expected a lot of holds. Nobody expected what came next.

One rule made all of it possible. At the time, Wimbledon had no tiebreak in the final set. The first four sets could be settled by a breaker. The fifth had to be won by two clear games, however long that took.

Tuesday went the way a tight first-rounder goes. Isner took the first set, Mahut the second, Mahut the third in a tiebreak, Isner the fourth in a tiebreak. Two sets apiece, and then it got dark. Nobody thought much of it.

The Set That Ate Wednesday

Wednesday was the fifth set, and only the fifth set. Isner held. Mahut held. Then they did it again, and again, for hours. Neither man could find a way into the other's serve, and neither would give his own away.

Somewhere along the way, the electronic scoreboard on the court gave out at 47-all. It had not been built for numbers like that. Play kept going without it. By evening the score was 59-59, and the light was gone again. The fifth set was suspended for darkness with no winner, the second time the match had been stopped.

By then the fifth set alone had run longer than any complete match ever played. The previous record for a full match, set at the French Open in 2004, was 6 hours and 33 minutes. Isner and Mahut blew past it in a single set and still had another day to go.

Thursday, Finally

They came back on Thursday and played more than another hour. The finish, when it came, was ordinary. With Mahut serving to stay in it, Isner broke, closing the match with a backhand pass down the line. Final score: 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68.

The totals read like a misprint. 183 games. 11 hours and 5 minutes of playing time. The fifth set lasted 8 hours and 11 minutes on its own. Both men served more than 100 aces, something nobody had ever done in a single match. Chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani worked all three days, and the three of them posed together afterward in front of the scoreboard.

The bill came due right away. Isner, with nothing left in his legs, lost his second-round match in straight sets in barely more than an hour.

The Plaque and the Rematch

Wimbledon does not hand out plaques for first-round matches. It made an exception. A plaque on Court 18 now lists the dates, the two names, the full score and the match duration, so anyone walking past can read the numbers and try to make them make sense.

The draw has a sense of humor. A year later, Isner and Mahut were paired in the first round at Wimbledon again. Isner won in straight sets, and everyone got home for dinner.

Mahut turned out fine. The man who lost the longest match ever played went on to win all four majors in men's doubles with Pierre-Hugues Herbert. Isner played on until 2023 and retired with the record still his.

The Rule That Finally Moved

You might think a match like that would end the no-tiebreak rule on the spot. It did not. Wimbledon kept the advantage final set for eight more years.

What finally moved it was, fittingly, another Isner marathon. In the 2018 semifinals, Kevin Anderson beat him 26-24 in the fifth after 6 hours and 36 minutes. The other semifinal, Novak Djokovic against Rafael Nadal, had to be finished the next day. Anderson was cooked for the final and lost to Djokovic in straight sets.

A few months later, Wimbledon announced a tiebreak at 12-all in the final set, starting in 2019. The first men's final decided that way came that same summer, Djokovic over Roger Federer. Since 2022, all four majors have played a ten-point tiebreak at 6-all in the deciding set.

That closes the door for good. Under today's rules, no fifth set at a major can go past 7-6. The record on Court 18 is not just unbeaten. At a major, it is out of reach.

Eleven hours, three days, one plaque, and a rule that took eight years to catch up. Somewhere at the All England Club, a scoreboard that gave up at 47-all is still owed an apology.