Thursday, June 24, 2010

Marathon Match Comparisons

Attempting to compare the length of Mahut and Isner's marathon tennis match to other sports. I'll be making some questionable assumptions*, but they are fair enough, and necessary for comparing two different sports.

Mahut and Isner's 68-70 fifth set match is akin to...

... a college basketball game going to 20 overtimes. (7 overtimes is the record)
... a major league baseball game going to 32 innings. (25 innings is the record)
... a NFL game going to 10 overtimes. (2 overtimes is the record)
... a golf match going to 45 extra holes. (11 extra holes is the record)

*Assuming an average tennis set has 10 games (6-4 sounds average-ish), and the ratio of the games played in the first five sets (50) to the remaining extra games played (128) means that the overtime is basically 2.5 times the regular time.

4 Comments:

Blogger Schaubs said...

Tennis is different - It's win by two sets.

Not sudden death like golf or anything else you listed.


P.S. - what happened to our survivor bet?

4:42 PM  
Blogger MHG said...

Found the old Survivor post and tallied them all up and... we tied!

How would you compare the marathon tennis match to sudden death in golf, or can you? How many holes would it take?

5:02 PM  
Blogger Schaubs said...

I don't think they compare with regards to time.

Golf in sudden death is all about doing one better than your opponent.

In tennis it is totally different because you are trying to not only win your set and win 4 points, but also break the other serve and do the same - back to back.

crazy format for Wimbeldon. Lots of other tournaments have actual 5th set tied breakers where as Wimbeldon you have to win by two complete games!

8:14 AM  
Blogger The NL Wife said...

I still think it was a good perspective . . . what a hell of a game.

8:31 AM  

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