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Working overtime Organizers scramble to overcome weather woes
Posted: Thursday July 01, 1999 08:01 PM
WIMBLEDON, England (AP) -- Rain-plagued Wimbledon appears headed for overtime again. Only two matches were completed Thursday and, with tournament organizers facing a huge backlog of unfinished matches, both singles finals are now set for Sunday, with doubles play likely to spill into an extra day Monday. Usually, the women's singles and men's and mixed doubles finals are on Saturday, with Sunday reserved for the men's singles and women's doubles finals. According to weather forecasters, Wimbledon is so popular this year that every rain cloud in the southeast seems to he headed for the All England Club. The result has been scheduling chaos for referee Alan Mills and his team. After a virtually uninterrupted first week, the rain washed out Tuesday entirely and allowed only a handful of matches Monday and Thursday. On what should have been women's semifinals day, organizers had to schedule four men's and women's quarterfinals. Persistent showers made it a stop-start day and only two of those eight matches -- Steffi Graf beating Venus Williams 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 and Lindsay Davenport beating defending women's champion Jana Novotna 6-3, 6-4 -- were completed. With the forecast of a rain-free day on Friday, the Wimbledon committee will hope to finish two men's quarterfinals which have barely started and start two more from the beginning. They also have to finish two more women's quarterfinals. If that goes according to plan, there should be two lots of semifinals on Saturday and both singles finals on Sunday. "Wimbledon seems be in the firing line of any rain that develops," said Marco Petagna, forecaster at the London Weather Center. "Any rain that's around seems to be in that part of the world." The forecast for the weekend is not promising. "On Saturday, the rain should clear around 7-8 a.m. and it will be a case of bright weather with the risk of scattered showers with still the potential of a heavier shower," Petagna said. "It will be pretty much similar on Sunday with a mixture of bright spells and a few showers. There could well be some general rain setting in during the afternoon around 3-4 p.m." Mills, the tournament referee, explained the club tried to be "fair and evenhanded" with the players. "The men still have one day per round," he said. "We are looking at a Friday, Saturday, Sunday scenario for the women." The last time both singles finals were played on Sunday was 1989 when Boris Becker and Steffi Graf both won to make it a first ever German double. The last time Wimbledon had to play on the extra Monday was in 1996 when Martina Hingis became the youngest ever Wimbledon titlist at age 16 in partnership in the women's doubles with Helena Sukova.
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