Summary The match lasted 4 hours, 37 minutes.
PARIS (AP) - After letting 12 match points slip away in the fourth set, 35-year-old Tommy Haas came back from a break down in the fifth and beat John Isner 7-5, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 6-7 (10), 10-8 at the French Open on Saturday.
The match lasted 4 hours, 37 minutes.
Haas was one point away from winning 12 times late in the fourth set, but the German couldn't close it out.
He was only 2 for 22 on break-point chances until converting his 23rd of the match when Isner put a volley in the net. Haas then served out the victory.
The 12th-seeded Haas is the first man to reach the fourth round at Roland Garros at 35 since Jonas Bjorkman was that age in 2007, and yet by the end, he looked to be the fresher man against the 19th-seeded Isner, who is 28.
At the changeover before the very last game, Isner chose not to even sit in his sideline chair, leaning over with his hands on his knees and his chest heaving.
Isner never had come back to win after dropping the first two sets of a match until he did it on Friday in Paris against Ryan Harrison in an all-U.S. matchup. But Isner couldn't quite pull off that trick twice in a span of about 30 hours, coming so close to another big comeback against Haas.
He had his chance to win, too. Leading 5-4 in the fifth set as Haas served, Isner earned his first, and only, match point. With the roles now reversed, Isner so close to a victory, Haas so close to a loss, the American failed to take advantage, flubbing a backhand on a 12-stroke exchange.
In Paris a year ago, Isner lost 18-16 in the second round to Paul-Henri Mathieu, a Frenchman ranked outside the top 250 at the time. That one lasted 5 hours, 41 minutes, making it the second-longest match, by time, in French Open history.
Against Haas, Isner already had saved nine match points before they even got around to playing the fourth-set tiebreaker.
That's where Haas, a four-time Grand Slam semifinalist, got three more chances to end things. Down 7-6 in the tiebreaker, though, Isner hit an ace. Then, with Haas getting a chance to serve while ahead 8-7, the German double-faulted. And at 9-8, making it an even dozen opportunities to win, Haas pushed a backhand into the net.
Isner eventually converted his third set point, at 11-10, with a service winner, and a wide smile creased his face.
The match was more than 3½ hours old, but it finally was even, at two sets apiece. That fourth set lasted more than an hour, and the fifth would, too, even though Isner broke in the opening game en route to grabbing a 3-0 lead.
But he couldn't hold on, despite 27 aces over the course of the late afternoon and early evening on Court 1, which is known as the "bullring" because of its oval shape. A large segment of the crowd, cheering for Haas, broke into clap-accompanied chants of "Tom-my! Tom-my!"
Haas moved on to face No. 29 Mikhail Youzhny of Russia for a berth in the quarterfinals.
