Tennis Trivia
A selection of tennis trivia and useless facts, inspired by the longest tennis match in history played at the 2010 Wimbledon tournament.
- The longest tennis match in history was played between between American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon on June 22-24, 2010. The first-round match took 11 hours and 5 minutes over three days, lasting so long it was suspended because of darkness two nights in a row. 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 (8 hours 11 minutes, 138 games) and the set itself would have broken the previous longest match record of 6 hours 33 minutes. The longest women's tennis match was played in 1984 between Vicki Nelson and Jean Hepner at the 'Ginny of Richmond' tournament in Richmond, Virginia. That match took 6 hours, 31 minutes with a score of 6–4, 7–6(11), and featured a 29-minute, 643-shot rally - the longest in professional tennis history.
- Possibly the shortest tennis match is the match that lasted just 20 minutes, when Susan M. Tutt beat Marion Bandy 6-0, 6-0 at the Wimbledon tournament in 1969.
- The US Open was known as the Patriotic Tournament in 1917 during World War I.
- The strings or guts of the tennis racket have in the past been made out of a cow and sheep guts.
- The French Open is named after the stadium it is played in, which is in turn named after a World War I pilot named Roland Garros.
- Boris Becker became the first unseeded player to win Wimbledon in 1985 when he was only 17 years old. He also became the youngest player to win the title, as well as the first German.
- The open era of tennis started in 1968. The first Grand Slam to go open was the French Open.
- Two Australian Open tournaments were held in 1977, when changing from a January event to a December event - the first in January, the second in December. In 1987, the tournament moved back to January, so no championship was decided in 1986.
- Tennis was first played at the Olympics in 1896, but was removed from competition after the 1924 games. It was played as a demonstration sport in 1968 and 1984, then re-introduced as an actual event for the 1988 Olympic Games.
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