Wimbledon: Famous Points
Famous Points
Highlight reels show you the shot. This page shows you the geometry: the most famous points — and the most famous tiebreak — in Championships history, reconstructed on the lawn, with real names, real scoreboards, and a click that plays each moment one swing at a time. The Scoring page teaches how tennis works; this is why anyone stands in a queue for it.
Every card below is a stylized reconstruction, drawn from the footage and the written record rather than tracking data: the sequence of shots, their directions, their landing areas, and every score are the real history; the exact flight paths are my illustration. Scores, dates, and quotes are reference-grade — verified 2026-08-26 — and each card links its record. Where a point isn’t documented shot by shot, I don’t animate it and I say so. Where footage rights-holders post the real thing, I link out; nothing is embedded or re-hosted.
2019 · Final · Centre Court
Two championship points, saved
Novak Djokovic d. Roger Federer, 7–6(5), 1–6, 7–6(4), 4–6, 13–12(3) · July 14, 2019
Fourteen thousand people on Centre Court were, by any honest count, all rooting for one man — and he was two points from a ninth title on his own serve. What Djokovic did next he had done to Federer twice before at the US Open, which somehow made it worse: he took both points away, then took the title in a tiebreak that had never been played before.
| Djokovic | 7 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 15 |
| Federer | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 40 |
One click per beat: each point the record describes, in order, with the board stepping between them.
Reconstruction, not tracking data: right sequence, right directions, right landing areas, right score — the exact paths are drawn by hand from the footage. That goes for every card on this page; the methodology note has the details.
Watch it: highlights of the 2019 finalWimbledon’s official channel on YouTubeDjokovic broke for 8–8 and the fifth set kept going: past Federer’s next chance, past the record for the longest Wimbledon final, all the way to 12–12 and the first fifth-set tie-break in the tournament’s history — a rule written after Isner and Mahut, and first used to end this. Djokovic won it 7–3. He remains the only man since 1948 to win Wimbledon after facing championship points, and Federer has said, more than once, that this is the one that got away.
The record: the ATP’s how-the-final-was-won breakdown and Wikipedia’s record of the final.
1980 · Final · Centre Court
The point that ended the greatest tiebreak ever played
Björn Borg d. John McEnroe, 1–6, 7–5, 6–3, 6–7(16), 8–6 · July 5, 1980
Thirty-four points, twenty-two minutes, five championship points saved and six set points squandered: the fourth-set tiebreak of the 1980 final is the most famous game ever played, and it is the reason a movie exists. After all of that — here is how it ended.
| Borg | 1 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 16 |
| McEnroe | 6 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 17 |
Click play and the reconstruction runs once, then waits: the recap of what you just watched appears right here.
McEnroe walked to his chair sure he had just won Wimbledon. Instead Borg went out and lost two points on serve in the entire fifth set, closing it 8–6 for a fifth consecutive title and dropping to his knees in the pose everyone can still draw from memory. The crowd had booed McEnroe onto the court that afternoon; they gave him an ovation on the way off. He won the next three of these.
The record: Tennis.com’s account of the tiebreak and Tennis Majors’ day-by-day retrospective.
2008 · Final · Centre Court
The two best passing shots of the fortnight, back to back
Rafael Nadal d. Roger Federer, 6–4, 6–4, 6–7(5), 6–7(8), 9–7 · July 6, 2008
It gets called the greatest match ever played, and the argument is usually won by these two points. Nadal, two sets up, needed one more swing to finish it. Federer, five-time defending champion, needed one more to keep the day going. They both produced the shot — on consecutive points, in the dark, in the tiebreak — and the commentary box simply gave up and said so out loud.
| Nadal | 6 | 6 | 6 | 7 |
| Federer | 4 | 4 | 7 | 7 |
One click per beat: each point the record describes, in order, with the board stepping between them.
Federer sealed the breaker 10–8, forced a fifth, and stood two points from a sixth straight title before Nadal broke him in the fifteenth game and served it out 9–7 — at 9:15 at night, in a darkness the cameras could barely hold. It ended Federer’s forty-match Wimbledon run, gave Nadal the Channel Slam, and was the last Wimbledon final rain ever got to interrupt: the roof went on for 2009.
The record: Wikipedia’s point-by-point record of the final and the BBC’s ten-years-on retrospective.
2005 · Final · Centre Court
Championship point down, and she goes down the line
Venus Williams d. Lindsay Davenport, 4–6, 7–6(4), 9–7 · July 2, 2005
Two hours and thirty-something minutes in, Venus had been the second-best player on the court for most of the afternoon, and had just double-faulted on her own serve to hand Davenport championship point. What she did with it is the whole reason this final gets called the best the women’s game has played here: she picked the smallest target available and hit it.
| V. Williams | 4 | 7 | 4 | 30 |
| Davenport | 6 | 6 | 5 | 40 |
Click play and the reconstruction runs once, then waits: the recap of what you just watched appears right here.
She held for 5–5, broke for 8–7, reached triple championship point on her own serve and won it on the second when Davenport netted a forehand. Two hours forty-five — still the longest women’s final Wimbledon has staged — and Venus became the first woman of the Open era, and the first since Helen Wills in 1935, to win this title after facing championship point.
The record: Tennis Majors’ account of the final and the WTA’s retrospective.
2010 · First round · Court 18
70–68, and then it stopped
John Isner d. Nicolas Mahut, 6–4, 3–6, 6–7(7), 7–6(3), 70–68 · June 22–24, 2010
Everything about this one is a number, so here are the numbers: eleven hours and five minutes, three days, 183 games, and a fifth set longer than any complete match ever played. The scoreboard broke. The umpire did not leave his chair for seven hours at a stretch. And after 168 consecutive service holds, it came down to one return, on the far side of a show court that seats a few hundred people.
| Isner | 6 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 69 | — |
| Mahut | 4 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 68 | — |
Click play and the reconstruction runs once, then waits: the recap of what you just watched appears right here.
Isner played the second round the next day and lost in straight sets in under two hours, which is the only correct ending. Mahut went back out and won a doubles match. Court 18 got a plaque. And the rules changed twice because of this match — first the 12–12 fifth-set tie-break that decided the 2019 final on this page, then the 6–6 breaker every major uses now. Nobody will ever do this again, by design.
The record: Wikipedia’s record of the match and Tennis.com’s ten-years-later retelling.
2001 · Fourth round · Centre Court
The changing of the guard
Roger Federer d. Pete Sampras, 7–6(7), 5–7, 6–4, 6–7(2), 7–5 · July 2, 2001
Sampras had won four Wimbledons in a row and seven in eight years, and had not lost here since 1996. Federer was nineteen, ranked fifteenth, and had never been past the fourth round of anything. They played once in their careers, and it was this — which is why the last point of it carries more freight than a fourth-round match has any right to.
| Federer | 7 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 40 |
| Sampras | 6 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 5 | 15 |
Click play and the reconstruction runs once, then waits: the recap of what you just watched appears right here.
Federer lost to Tim Henman in the next round and did not win a major for another two years — then won this tournament eight times, more than anyone. Sampras, gracious in the interview room, called him “a little more extra special than the other guys,” which turned out to be the understatement of the decade. He never won Wimbledon again.
The record: Tennis Majors’ account of the match and ESPN’s report from the day.
Methodology. Each animation is a stylized reconstruction I scripted by hand from public footage and contemporaneous match reports (the ATP, the BBC, Tennis.com, Tennis Majors, the WTA, and the outlets linked on each card) — not ball-tracking data. What the reconstruction holds exactly: the shot sequence, shot directions, landing areas, endings, and every score shown on the boards. What is illustrative: the precise flight paths and speeds. The 1980 card animates only the two tiebreak points the record describes shot by shot, and says so rather than inventing the other thirty-two. Facts verified 2026-08-26. The court, physics, and player are the same engine as the Scoring walkthrough — every serve lands in a legal box and every shot clears the net by construction — wearing the lawn instead of the hard court. Footage is linked on rights-holders’ own sites only, never embedded; player names appear nominatively in factual, historical reporting. A new legendary moment earns a card at most once a year — the roster grows after each Championships, if the Championships earn it.