It was a match played in England, but it wasn’t cricket. No, this was a three day tennis match at Wimbledon, which began on Tuesday the 23rd. After John Isner and Nicolas had 3 hours on Tuesday, their match was postponed due to darkness, with the fifth set knotted 6-6.
The match resumed on Wednesday, with one of the men needing to win by 2 games, per Grand Slam tournaments no-fifth-set-tiebreaker rule. However, after 7 more hours of play and with the light fading, things remained knotted at an unbelievable 59-59 games. The first 4 sets had consisted of a total of 45 games, but this fifth set was now a ridiculous 118.
Finally, on day three of the match, Isner was able to break Mahut’s serve, to win the fifth set 70 games to 68, and claim the match.
If you don’t know tennis well, hand-wavy math says a typical set averages at or below 10 games. These two men played an insane 183 games total, well over 18 sets worth of tennis. You don’t need to know much to know that that’s just incredible.
Now, which one of the guys in this photo do you think is Isner, the winner?
