The epic men’s singles second round encounter between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut broke Wimbledon’s state-of-the-art technology as well as records on Wednesday evening.
The players eventually trudged off Court No. 18 shortly before 9.30pm, with their astonishing encounter locked at 59-59 in the fifth set.
At exactly ten hours’ duration, the match is almost three-and-a-half hours longer than the previous record Grand Slam encounter between Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clement at the French Open in 2004.
But an electronic malfunction, in which the scoreboard broke down at 47-47, meant that Swedish umpire Mohamed Lahyani was compelled to keep the growing crowd up to date by repeatedly announcing the game score.
It was later revealed by IBM programmers that the scoreboard was not programmed to go any higher than 47, but that the issue would be resolved in time for the start of the action on Thursday afternoon.
The match is due to recommence back on Court 18 at 3.30pm, and you’ll be able to follow it live with us at our special Tennis Match-Tracker over at the sports section.
