tennisnet and SPOX present some of the longest tennis matches of all time.
By Christian Albrecht Barschel
Two double matches, an incomprehensible women’s match and a total of six games in the Davis Cup are on the list of the ten longest tennis matches. Two players even made it twice into this record list.
Ivo Karlovic did not have 78 aces (world record at the time) and four match points to take Croatia into the lead against the Czech Republic in the 2009 Davis Cup semi-finals. The Croatian lost to Radek Stepanek after almost six hours and was of course frustrated afterwards. “I feel like I’ve been in a 10-round boxing match. Everything hurts. I did my best, but Stepanek was always there. “After the defeat, the serve record means little.”
It is amazing that there were only three breaks on the clay court in Porec, Croatia. Two in the first set and Stepanek’s decisive break at 15:14, “It was like a lottery, I managed to take my chances. It’s been a long and exhausting match, but if you play for your country, it’s worth it. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had lasted a few more hours,” said a delighted Stepanek, who thus ushered in the Czech semi-final victory in Croatia.
The match between Horst Skoff and Mats Wilander is still the longest Davis Cup singles since the introduction of the tiebreak. The Austrian and the Swede fought for 6:04 hours on the clay court in Vienna. Skoff won 9:7 in the fifth set and celebrated one of his biggest individual victories. It was Wilander’s second defeat in the Davis Cup after more than six hours of play (more about this later). Skoff’s 1-1 draw in the quarter-finals, however, brought nothing. Sweden won the match 3-2 and Skoff suffered a heart attack in 2008 at the age of 39 and died from it. “It’s hard to believe a man has to die at such a young age. Horsti has accompanied, challenged, motivated and driven me to top performance over many years of my career,” said compatriot Thomas Muster about Skoff’s sudden death.
The 2002 Davis Cup doubles match between Russia and Argentina is the second longest double in tennis history. The Argentines Lucas Arnold Ker and David Nalbandian and the Russians Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Marat Safin duelled in Moscow for 6:20 hours. In the end, Arnold Ker and Nalbandian had the better end to themselves, shortening the Davis Cup semi-final to 1:2, but it looked like the Russians had won. Safin served at 17:16 to win the match for Russia. The Argentines fended off two match points, came back into play and soon after Kafelnikov lost the serve to win the match. “When we switched sides (at 17:16) I thought we lost the match. With a safin serving like that, I didn’t think it was possible to come back. But in tennis it’s often like that: We fended off two match points, then it was up to us to finish the match,” said Arnold Kerr afterwards. But the Argentines didn’t get anything out of the colon. Russia reached the Davis Cup final and also won the title.
It was about bare survival in the world group in the Davis Cup, when in 1987 the USA and Germany faced each other in the relegation. The whole game, especially the second singles match between John McEnroe and Boris Becker, went down in the annals as “The Battle of Hartford”. Becker remained calm in the witch’s cauldron of Hartford, did not let himself be intimidated by the psychic games of McEnroe and wrestled the US-American after epic 6:21 hours. If you look at the result of sets four and five, you can imagine that this match could have gone on much longer. Of course, it has to be said that there was no tiebreak in the Davis Cup in 1987. This was only introduced in this competition in 1989.
Becker and McEnroe needed almost five hours for three sets. The sets four and five finally went to Becker, who became a German hero on this Davis Cup weekend. For Becker, it is “the biggest match I have ever played”. But he didn’t find any kind words for McEnroe. “I admire him as a tennis player, but I feel sorry for him as a human being. He’ll know exactly why. Becker later raised concerns that “it was a war”. McEnroe folded after defeat. “I didn’t have much left. I gave everything I could. It was nice to be part of a big match. I just wish the result was different.” Germany remained top-notch with a 3-2 win at Hartford, laying the foundation for the first Davis Cup title in 1988.
John McEnroe and Mats Wilander played the longest Davis Cup singles in tennis history so far in 1982, but without a tiebreak. The match was the decisive singles match in the Davis Cup quarter-finals between the USA and Sweden. McEnroe won the fierce battle against the then 17-year-old new French Open winner after 6:22 hours, leading the USA to victory. The third set alone lasted 2:39 hours. “At one point I thought it would take forever, and that was frustrating. It’s hard to go out there against a 17-year-old and not know what to do next. I knew he was capable of playing well. He was totally excited to play,” McEnore said after the match. US captain Arthur Ashe was completely upset after the semi-final entry. “He’s entitled to go out and get drunk today,” Ashe said of McEnroe’s performance. Wilander and McEnroe are the only two players to have played two matches (both in the Davis Cup) with over six hours playing time.
6:31 hours for a 6:4, 7:6 (11)? Unimaginable, but still true! The two US-Americans Vicki Nelson and Jean Hepner played a curious match for the history books at the 1984 women’s tournament in Richmond (US state Virginia). Nelson (then number 93) and Hepner (then number 172) played the ball to each other in the first round for 6:31 hours at a slow pace, there is no other way to describe it in this long playing time. The two Americans played the longest women’s match in tennis history and for 20 years were even record holders in the longest professional tennis match ever played. It wasn’t until 2004 that Nelson and Hepner’s season was surpassed.
The tie-break in the second set, which lasted an incredible 1:47 hours, was particularly curious. Even more incredible is the play time of the rally at the score of 11:10 and set point for Hepner. The rally lasted as much as 29 minutes and included 643 strokes. “There was tons of praise. I tried to move forward and she overcommitted me again,” Nelson described, who finally defended the point and the set point with the 643 stroke. “I thought I was going crazy. No matter what I did to the ball, she brought it back. It took me a long time to have the nerve to move forward. But finally she played a short praise and I cleared it out of the way forever,” Nelson looked back on the match in an interview with the New York Times.
The marathon ball change left its mark on Nelson, who collapsed with cramps in her legs. The referee showed rigour and warned the US-American about timeouts. But Nelson pulled himself together again and won the record match with two more points. It’s hard to imagine how long the match would have lasted if Hepner had won the marathon ball change and the set. Nelson apologized to the line judges for the length of the game after the victory. “I felt sorry for you. They sat out there for so long, they must have fallen asleep.”
By the way, the defeated Hepner had no idea that the match had taken so long. “There’s a time distortion when you’re in alpha – like hypnosis. I had no idea six and a half hours had passed.” The match was watched by renowned sports journalist John Packett, who also counted the number of shots during the mega ball change. “I started counting because the rallies went on so long. One had to imagine how long these points would take? I’m not sure why I even saw it. I’m glad I did it after it turned out to be an historic match. But it wasn’t one of the highlights of my journalistic career,” Packett said.
Hugh Waters, the owner of the club where the match took place, remembered this memorable event as follows. “I had a lot of people who came to me during the tournament and said that the match was ridiculous, but I always threw myself at them. It takes guts to do what they did. People don’t understand the mental aspect of the game. It was a struggle of will. Real tennis fans like me can appreciate that.” Shortly after the match was over, Nelson also celebrated her birthday. The American celebrated her 22nd birthday and told her boyfriend about her experience after the victory. “She told me it was the worst day of her life. I asked her if she lost and she said no, she won, but just got off the pitch. I told her to imagine how Jean felt,” explained Keith Dunbar, who later became Nelson’s husband.
In the second round in Richmond, Nelson was understandably eliminated, but not without enormous resistance (7:5, 5:7, 0:6). “I was really bad, I could hardly move that day.” The defeat in the record match was still an issue for the defeated Hepner 25 years later. “My stomach still starts to hurt when I think about it. There was a lot going on in my personal life at the time. I tried to turn my career in the right direction, and it got harder to do it. But I didn’t stay out there for six hours to get attention. I just wanted to win this match so much,” Hepner told the New York Times.
Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clement fought a match over two days and 6:33 hours. The two French played an epic duel in the first round of their home grand slam, the French Open in Paris, in 2004. The match was abandoned after 4:38 hours of play at 5:5 in the fifth set due to darkness. Shortly before, Clement had assigned a match point at 5-4. The following day, the two Frenchmen were on the pitch for almost two hours. Santoro fended off another match point at 13-14 and finally emerged victorious.
“I was close to defeat, it’s a miracle. I tried to stay relaxed on the important points. And if it actually looked like that, I did a good job because it was very tense,” Santoro said afterwards. The two Frenchmen set a new record for the longest tennis match at that time. “I’m not interested. What do I get? A medal? There may be an even longer match tomorrow. I don’t play tennis to spend as much time as possible on the court,” Clement was served after his defeat.
That the Davis Cup doubles are always good for a drama was proven this year in the first round between Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Marco Chiudinelli and Stanislas Wawrinka on the Swiss side and Tomas Berdych and Lukas Rosol on the Czech side not only played the longest double in tennis history, but also the longest match in the Davis Cup. The four players duelled for 7:02 hours and broke some records. The never-ending fifth set lasted 3:35 hours. Chiudinelli/Wawrinka fended off a total of twelve match points. A double mistake by Chiudinelli at the 13th match point put the end of this historic encounter.
“Even if someone beats this record in the future, I have had this experience that I can share with anyone. This is the kind of experience that makes up the competition. That’s why I keep coming back. You play tennis for the memories, and once you have achieved something, the memories are something none of you can steal,” explained Berdych, who helped the Czechs to victory in Switzerland with three points. For Vavrinka, the defeat was particularly bitter. Two weeks earlier at the Australian Open, the Swiss player had lost another memorable match against Novak Djokovic after five hours.
It was a game of records in which tennis and sports history was written. John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played the longest tennis match ever in the first round of the 2010 Wimbledon tournament. It’s hard to find words for this epic duel. After 11 hours and 5 minutes John Isner defeated Nicolas Mahut 6:4, 3:6, 6:7 (7), 7:6 (3), 70:68. The fifth set alone would have been the longest tennis match with a playing time of 8:11 hours. “What these two players have shown is one of the greatest things ever seen in this sport. That was pure heroism,” John McEnroe tried to find words for the match.
After three rounds of play, the match, which broke many records, came to an end. Isner scored 478 points and hit 112 aces, Mahut scored 502 points and hit 103 aces. “All I said to myself was, you have to stay on both feet. Isner said about the marathon: “It’s no better for your opponent geht´s either. Mahut, whom Isner’s match point hit like a knife wound into the heart at 70:68, said that he was partly mistaken across the court like “a drunk”, “barely in his senses”: “I was only steered from the subconscious”. Isner and Mahut have set records for eternity. It has to be with the devil if this record is to be broken. But sport has already proven that there is still an increase.
Especially curious: Isner and Mahut met again in Wimbledon one year later – again in the first round. The probability of this event before the draw was 1:142.5 and Isner won again against Mahut, but this time it took only 2:03 hours. In 2012 there was almost the third part in Wimbledon between Isner and Mahut. In the second round it could have come to another duel of the record men. But Isner prevented a third part because he was eliminated in the first round. (Photo: Jürgen Hasenkopf)