Epic tennis match

http://tennis.fanhouse.com/2010/06/24/john-isner-wins-epic-wimbledon-marathon-over-nicolas-mahut/

A match in which the 5th set finished 70-68.

I just listened to the end on Wimbledon radio on their website. Crazy 1st round match for sure! Sounds like it reset every record there was (length, games, aces, combined aces, etc).

Bite it, France...

I still don't really understand how tennis is scored, but I know it's a pretty hard game, and that it's not supposed to take three days. Pretty cool.

In reply to Twin_Cam:

Seriously, that's cricket territory.

Twin_Cam wrote: I still don't really understand how tennis is scored, but I know it's a pretty hard game, and that it's not supposed to take three days. Pretty cool.

The scoring started out like the quarters of a clock "15/30/45/Game"...then morphed into "15/30/40/Game". You start at Love (Love in tennis = zero)

1) Your score is first (when serving), if you lose the first point, the score is "Love/15", lose the second point = "Love/30"...and so on.

2) "Deuce" is when both scores of the game are at 40/40. You win the next point, you have "advantage"...or simply "ad". You win the next point, you win the game. You lose "advantage" and it goes back to deuce.

3) Depending on the Tournament, men play 3-5 sets, to 6 games, have to win by 2 games (6-0 or 6-1 up to 6-4).If you are at 6-5,and win the next game you can win at 7-5. If you both hold serve and the score is 6-6, it goes into a tie-breaker...that's where you'll see a score of 7-6.

4) In Grand Slam events, the men play 5 sets, and the last set cannot be won by a tie breaker...which is why there was the marathon tennis match.

Hope that helps.

if they'd just score it like volleyball, it would make more sense.

Wait, what? I'm sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

man that's intense... playing 3-5 sets back in the day would just about kill me sometimes (then again I was playing in 90*+ temps with 80% humidity... but still... WOW

Simpler way to look at the scoring is:

Win Game = 1st person to 4 points. Must win by 2 (They just don't call the points 0,1,2,3 but Love,15,30,40).

Win Set = 1st person to 6 games. Must wing by 2. If 6-6, play a tiebraker.

Match = 1st person to 2 sets (if playing 2 out of 3) or 1st person to 3 sets (if playing 3 out of 5).

At certain tournaments (including Wimbledon) they don't play a tiebraker in the last set so it can go on until someone wins two games in a row and it can sometimes take awhile.

The most amazing thing to me is that nobody lost their serve for that long. Also, this match reset records that existed before the tiebrake was invented. Back when all 5 sets could have been 22-20