The Longest Tennis Match Ever Played

The longest tennis match ever played was John Isner’s win over Nicolas Mahut in the first round of Wimbledon 2010, a contest that lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes across three days. Isner took it 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68, with the final set alone running longer than most entire matches.

Tennis has no clock and, for most of its history, no cap on the deciding set, which is how two players once traded serve for more than eight hours without either breaking. Endurance, nerve and sheer stubbornness produced a handful of matches that dwarf anything else in the sport. Here is the full leaderboard of the longest matches ever played and why the record at the top can never be broken. All figures are as of the 2025 season.

The record: Isner 70-68 over Mahut, Wimbledon 2010

The match began on June 22, 2010, was suspended twice for darkness, and finally ended on June 24. The fifth set reached 70-68, meaning Isner and Mahut held serve for 137 straight games before Isner secured the only break of the set. Isner served 113 aces; Mahut hit 103. The scoreboard was not even built to display a score that high and briefly froze at 47-47.

The totals are staggering: 183 games in the match, 138 in the final set, and 11 hours and 5 minutes of tennis. No match in history is within four hours of it, which is why it is universally regarded as one of sport’s most unbreakable records.

The full leaderboard of the longest tennis matches

The table below ranks the longest matches in professional tennis history by playing time.

Time	Match	Event	Round
11h05m	John Isner def. Nicolas Mahut	Wimbledon 2010	First round
6h36m	Kevin Anderson def. John Isner	Wimbledon 2018	Semifinal
6h33m	Fabrice Santoro def. Arnaud Clement	French Open 2004	First round
5h53m	Novak Djokovic def. Rafael Nadal	Australian Open 2012	Final
5h22m	Younes El Aynaoui vs Andy Roddick	Australian Open 2003	Quarterfinal
5h14m	Fernando Verdasco vs Rafael Nadal	Australian Open 2009	Semifinal

The list is dominated by five-set epics with no final-set tiebreak, the format that allowed sets to stretch indefinitely. John Isner appears twice, having played the two longest matches ever recorded. Exact times for a few older Davis Cup marathons vary by source, but none approach Isner-Mahut.

The 2012 Australian Open final: the longest major final

While Isner-Mahut was a first-round oddity, the fourth entry on the list is the sport’s greatest marathon at the highest stakes: Novak Djokovic’s 5-hour, 53-minute win over Rafael Nadal in the 2012 Australian Open final. Both men were so exhausted that chairs were brought out for the trophy ceremony. It remains the longest Grand Slam singles final ever played.

Why the record is permanent

The endless final sets that produced these marathons no longer exist. Since 2022, all four Grand Slams have used a 10-point tiebreak once the deciding set reaches 6-6, and other events adopted similar rules earlier. A set can no longer stretch to 70-68, so Isner-Mahut is not just the longest match ever, it is a record that is now mathematically out of reach.

For more on the game’s other extremes, see our leaderboards on the fastest serve in tennis, the players with the most Grand Slam titles in tennis, and the champions who own the most Wimbledon titles.

Why the record matters

Tennis prizes stamina as much as skill, and no match ever tested it like Isner-Mahut. Eleven hours of near-flawless serving turned a first-round match between two players ranked outside the top 20 into one of the sport’s defining stories. Thanks to the modern tiebreak rule, it will stand as the longest match forever.

The short version: the longest tennis match ever played was John Isner’s 11-hour, 5-minute win over Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon 2010, ending 70-68 in the fifth. As of the 2025 season, no match is close, and rule changes mean none ever will be.