If you have been focused on the Football World Cup, you may not have noticed that after three days of playing, the longest tennis match in history has just finished – what a marathon!
The tennis match was played between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut at the Wimbledon Championships, starting on June 22 and finishing on the 24th. The match eventually took 11 hours and 5 minutes, spread over three days. The match was won by Isner 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68.
The fifth set was the longest set in history as determined by both duration and number of games and the set itself would have broken the previous longest match record of 6 hours 33 minutes.
The US Open is the only of the Grand Slams to use a tie-breaker in the final set for singles matches, the other tournaments use an advantage set, meaning they keep playing until there is a winner by two games clear.
As you can see, this can mean a game can go on indefinitely. I hope the others don’t follow the US example and remove the advantage set, as we could miss out on such dramatic games as this.
It was recently announced that women tennis players at Wimbledon next year will get the same prize money as the men. Why does it have to be so? There is inequality in sport everywhere, but this is not sexist. 