Neverending: The Longest Tennis Match

On June twenty fourth, twenty ten, in the Wimbledon's first round, American John Isner took on Frenchman Nicholas Maou and little did they know they would end up playing the longest tennis match in Wimbledon's history. Behind these tennis athletes and what happened in this crazy matchup today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day. And today's trivia question is what was the longest women's singles match of all time? Now, to start out, let's jump into both of these tennis players and see how they got to this point. Now. John Eisner born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and started playing tennis at the age of nine and takes long before he got real into the game and started taking it seriously at the age of eleven, and he led his high school team to the state championship in two thousand and one, and this led him to continue tennis in college, playing for being recruited by the Georgia Bulldogs, where he had a college career record of one hundred and forty three wins and twenty eight losses. In singles and one hundred and forty wins in twenty seven losses in doubles, and was regularly ranked as the top tennis player across the country in the NC DOUBLEA, and he actually won the two thousand and five NCUBLEA doubles title with his partner Antonio Rouiz Rosees. And in two thousand and seven he won the team event versus Illinois and made it to the singles finals, where he lost in three sets, ending his college career be Shore. The same year he would turn pro and would quickly climb up the ranks and he would be the twenty third ranked player in the world heading into Wimbledon in twenty ten, where he would face off against Frichman Nicholas mount And. Nicholas was born in Ingers, France, and he started training in tennis at the age of five and joined a tennis club in Paris at the age of eleven, playing in juniors around the world, including the Covenant Orange Bowl, which was one of the major tournaments for junior tennis in nineteen ninety nine, and played in the Wimbledon Boys Singles in two thousand, turning pro that same year and in two thousand and three he actually broke broke into the top one hundred for the first time, and he also competed in doubles and won his first doubles title at the Open Day Mozelle tournament. And in two thousand and five he actually broke into the top twenty five in doubles as well, and by twenty ten he had over fifty career singles victories and was flirting with being in the top one hundred and the top one fifty. Entering into the Wimbledon twenty ten tournament, he was actually a qualifier, which meant he participated in qualifying tournaments to get his spot into Wimbledon and was ranked one hundred and forty eight. And in that first round we saw John Eisner, the favorite, go up against Nicholas Maout and it all started at six thirteen pm on Tuesday June twenty second, twenty ten, on Court eighteen at Wimbledon. So up until twenty ten, the longest men single match was at the two thousand and four French Open. It was a first round match where Fabryce beat a nude in six hours and thirty three minutes and lasted two days. And since twenty and ten there have been two other matches that have lasted over six hours, and they were both at the Davis Cup in twenty and thirteen in twenty fifteen, but still we're nowhere close to what happened at Wimbledon in twenty ten. And just for reference, the longest women's match was at the nineteen eighty four Central Fidelity Bank Invitational, where American Vicki Nelson beat fellow American Gene in the first round, with the match set totaled six hours and thirty one minutes, which is impressive because the women's game also only plays the best of three sets, where the men play best of five, so John and Nicos And at this time, the Wimbledon only had lights on their center court, and this was Court eighteen, one of their preliminary courts, and they usually only use the center court for the finals in the semi finals, and the match started on the second day of the thirteen day Wimbledon tournament. And every Grand and Wimbledon is one of the Grand Slams in tennis. Each Grand Slam has played best of five sets, and to win a set you need to either be the first to get to win six games or win by two and a game consists of basically four points. Love is zero, fifteen, fifteen is one, thirty is two, forty is three, and game is four. So once you get to four, you win out. And you often hear them call like thirty love or thirty fifteen, and that's their point system for tennis and have you also have to win by two for these games, and you often hear if they're tied at if they're tied at forty, they call deuces, which means they're tied. And after twenty ten they change the rules where before you play the tiebreakers through every set, but after this long tournament, this long game, they changed the rules to make it that now they only do it in the fifth set. So the game started without incident, but many worried as the late start happened, which is common sometimes in these tournaments because tennis is not a timed game, so you're matched up after someone else playing on the court, so you have to wait for them to finish. And John Eisner, the favorite, took the first the first set six to four, but n Nico took the second set six to three, and the third set is win. They really started to show the challenges as Nico won seven to six, but they had to go into sixteen tiebreakers to get for Nico to finally get that win, and then Eisner took the four set, which they also had to go to ten tiebreakers. So already in the first four sets, it was a long time. It was almost three hours into the game, which three hours is about as long as a normal tennis match last, so they're going a little bit slower than normal. And at this point it's nine oh seven and there's no lights and daylight is fading, so that they say they're going to suspend play and start the fifth set the following day at two o five pm. And this is where things get interesting. They ended in the fifth set and they went to the tiebreaker. So these tiebreakers in tennis is very it's different than a normal set. Serves are alternated instead of one person serving that entire game, and so the first person serves one, the next person serves the next one, and then you do every two. Then you do every two as one person serves two times, the next person serves the other two, and you go back and forth, back and forth until someone gets to seven and wins by two and or wins by two, so you can win by you can win seven to five or any variation, or in any number lower than five, or you just keep going back and forth until someone wins by two. And then Ernico and John ended in a tie and they went to the tiebreaker, and this is where things went a little crazy, as no player was winning consecutive sets. It just went back and forth, back and forth. No one could get those two wins. John failed to convert four match points on this day, being up ten to nine, failed to get the match point, being up thirty three to thirty two also failed, and being up fifty nine to fifty eight he also failed. And by this point they had already shattered the previous record for the longest game ever played. And Nico also had two match points as well during this time and failed as well. And when the tiebreaker was tied fifty to fifty, the match was suspended due to darkness and would be played on a third day. Now, fifty to fifty that is a lot. Each of those points is a game they played. They played for almost seven hours this day, and when they finally spended it, both John and Nico were devastated. They just wanted this to end. They didn't want to continue to go more and more, and the challenge was neither of them could sleep. They were antsy, they were excited, it's wimbled it. It's one of the biggest tournaments, but they just couldn't sleep. Neither of them slept more than three hours that night because the game wasn't over. This is the first round of the tournament, and coming in the next day, each were kind of pretending that the other one had slept and were trying to be impressive where they could see each other warming up, acting like they were ready to go, but the truth was both of them were dead, tired, dead, exhausted and just wanted this to be over. And so on June twenty fourth, twenty ten, on court eighteen, still they continued their match, and they went all the way to being tied sixty eight to sixty eight when Nico went up thirty love, but iSER came back and won four straight points to win the game, giving him a sixty nine to sixty eight lead in the tiebreaker, and it was Nico's turn to serve and it was fifteen fifteen and hit where he dove for a drop shot and fell into the ground, exhausted, and he said later that he probably would have made that shot and tore the point if he had any energy left to chase after the shot. That's why he dove after it and they ended up tied back at thirty thirty when Eisner passed hit a shot cross court with his forehand just inside the line that Nico just could not reach and getting him the lead to thirty. And this was the fifth match point and the first one on the third day of this match and fourteenth overall breakpoint for the match, and Eisner converted a down the line backhand shot that made it right past Nico and after over an hour and seven minutes on this third day of this match, John Eisner had finally beat Nico my tiebreaker set that went seventy to sixty eight. The entire match lasted three days, a total playing time of eleven hours and five minutes, which was a world record, beating the previous time by over four and a half hours. Funny enough, the scoreboard was struggling to keep up with this as it had never gone this high before, and it set forty seven to forty seven from the second day all the way until they got it fixed for the third day. But after the game the two players embraced in a quick hug and handshake that the two that John and Nico regret to this day that they didn't do more, but they were both exhausted and just kind of happy that it ended. Nico was happy to be a part of such an memorable time at Wimbledon, even though he lost, and John was happy to move on to the next round. But sadly, probably due to exhaustion, John lost his next round the next day and the match only lasted seventy four minutes. It was the shortest match at Wimbledon that year. Now, both John and Nico were doubles for this tournament as well, and both their games were delayed due to their singles matches. But Eisner had to withdraw due to blisters on his toe, and Nico lost his doubles match as well in four sets. And interestingly enough, they would meet two more times in the two thousand and eleven season, once at the twenty eleven Hopman Cup in Perth and again at Wimbledon one year later, and everyone wanted to see this great matchup again and John Eisner won in three sets. I think the match only lasted two hours and three minutes. And John finally retired in twenty twenty three, with sixteen career titles and his best finish at a Grand Slam getting to the semifinals in Wimbledon in two thousand and eight, and his highest ranking was eighth in the world in twenty eighteen, and was able to accumulate over twenty two million dollars during his career, and Nico is currently still playing. He won a total of four career titles and was ranked as high as thirty seventh in twenty fourteen, and his best finish at a Grand Slam was being in the fourth round at Wimbledon in twenty sixteen. He's had a much better career as a doubles player than in his singles career, has won every single Grand Slam in doubles and won two French Opens, and as a career earnings over twelve million dollars. Though these two tennis players are not household names, many of us have never heard of them until this moment in twenty ten, but it was a great moment where everyone was drawn to the first round of Wimbledon, which no one usually remembers. Then they also have put a plaque on Core eighteen commemorating the moment in the longevity of this great moment in tennis history. And I want to thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you like this, please follow us on all our socials Daily Sports History on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok YouTube, follow us all there. We like to do little videos of each of our stories so you can get a quick video to go along with the story and come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History. And did you get today's trivia question? What was the longest women's singles match of all time? The longest women's match was at the nineteen eighty four Central Fidelity Bank Invitational, where American Vicki Nelson beat fellow American Jeen Hepner in the first round.