Tennis : Top 5 of the longest matches in history

Top 5 craziest Grand Slam tennis marathons

Tennis has a brutal edge that is unlike anything else in sport. There is no clock to save you. No final whistle to cut the pain short or freeze the score. In football or rugby, a team can shut up shop and run down the seconds. On a tennis court, that option does not exist. To leave the locker room as the winner, you have to win the very last point.

That basic rule can sometimes create terrifying distortions in time. When two evenly matched players refuse to give in, the tactical side of the contest disappears. The match turns into a cold-blooded test of survival. Energy reserves drain away. Lactate floods the body. Cramp locks the limbs. Mental fatigue strips away all clarity. Even the crowd often goes from excitement to a kind of stunned silence as the physical wreckage unfolds in front of them.

In the brutal arena of Grand Slam tennis, best-of-five matches have produced some utterly irrational contests. Players who walked on court in the afternoon did not come off until deep into the night, or sometimes the next day. Here are the five tennis matches that pushed human endurance far beyond its biological limits.

5. Novak Djokovic – Rafael Nadal (Open d’Australie 2012) : 5h53

This is the longest final of the Open Era. Every shot feels like it breaks the laws of logic. For nearly six hours, the Serbian and the Spanish star go blow for blow on Melbourne’s hard courts. The sheer brutality of the rallies wears out the crowd too. By the end, even the formal ceremony falls apart. Organisers had to bring chairs out for the two gladiators during the closing speeches. Their legs were gone, plain and simple.

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4. Lorenzo Giustino – Corentin Moutet (Roland-Garros 2020) : 6h05

A grim autumn edition. The clay was heavy, soaked through with moisture. The balls barely bounced. This anonymous first-round match quickly turned into a monumental slog. The Frenchman and the Italian became stuck in a trench fight that stretched over two days. No flashy winners, just a war of attrition and extreme physical and mental strain. Giustino eventually came through 18-16 in the fifth set, in a stadium that was almost empty. A terrifying under-the-radar marathon.

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3. Fabrice Santoro – Arnaud Clément (Roland-Garros 2004) : 6h33

A battle between countrymen. On Suzanne-Lenglen court, the magician Santoro faced the marathon man Clément. The contrast in styles could hardly have been sharper. The match simply refused to end. Night forced play to stop. The next day, the suffering resumed. The two Frenchmen drove their bodies well past breaking point. At 16-14 in the deciding set, Santoro collapsed in tears on the clay. For years, that match stood as the gold standard for stamina on the red dirt.

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2. Kevin Anderson – John Isner (Wimbledon 2018) : 6h36

Britain’s rulebook absurdity pushed to the extreme. A Wimbledon semi-final caught in a time loop. Two giant servers who could not break each other. The fifth set became a torture chamber lasting more than three hours. Anderson finally edged it 26-24. The fallout was ugly. The American was wrecked. The South African arrived in the final in a state of clinical exhaustion. That nightmare led tournament organisers to bring in a fifth-set tie-break the following year.

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1. John Isner – Nicolas Mahut (Wimbledon 2010) : 11h05

The numbers defy all sporting logic. Three days of play. 183 games. The fifth set alone (8h11) lasted longer than any other match in history. On Court No 18 at Wimbledon, the American and the Frenchman lost all sense of time. The electronic scoreboard broke down, unable to go past 47-47. The final score of 70-68 in the fifth set will be etched forever into sporting folklore. A record that is now, quite literally, untouchable after tennis’s rule changes.

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Photo by BEN STANSALL / AFP

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