E-Paper
Third ever "People's Sunday" at Wimbledon
Tennis will be played on the first Sunday at Wimbledon for only the third time in its history, All England club officials said.
Tennis will be played on the first Sunday at Wimbledon for only the third time in its history, All England club officials said on Saturday.
The 2004 programme has been severely disrupted with a total washout on Wednesday and was heading for a second blank day Saturday.
"The first Sunday play at Wimbledon was in 1991, the second in 1997 and sadly the third will be in 2004," said the club's chief executive Chris Gorringe.
"This has been a tough decision to make, but everyone with whom we have consulted has been most understanding and co-operative.
"Fortunately the forecast for Sunday is reasonably encouraging so we should be able to reduce the backlog of matches."
The club said in a statement that 11,000 Centre Court tickets would be available on a first-come, first-served basis with play on all courts starting at 1000 GMT.
Both men's and women's top seeds and defending champions Roger Federer of Switzerland and Serena Williams of the United States had been due to play on Centre Court on Saturday.
Tournament referee Alan Mills said that while the outlook looked bleak, organisers still hoped for some play later on Saturday, although Britain's Tim Henman, due on Centre Court, had definitely been rescheduled for Sunday.
He said that 262 matches had been played in all events until the end of Friday's play and they should have played 376 by the end of Saturday. There were around 400 ties still to play until the men's singles final on July 4.
Already after Wednesday's washout, the men's doubles were reduced to the best of three sets until the quarter-finals and play on all courts were brought forward by one hour.
Earlier, the Olympic flame provided the only warmth on Centre Court as another rainy front swept through to delay the start of play.
Eternal British hope Tim Henman was the main bearer of the flame, which is on its usual world tour en route for the Athens Games in August.
Henman received the symbolic spark from four-minute miler Roger Bannister who lit it on a Centre Court bedecked with umbrellas to shield spectators against the lightly-falling rain.
The 29-year-old, four-times former semi-finalist is set to play old rival Hicham Arazi of Morocco.
The number five seed has an 8-3 winning record against the crafty Arazi and will fancy his chances of making it through to the last 16 as the next step in his quest to provide a first British winner of the men's singles at Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.
The first week was badly hit by rain with Wednesday's total washout the first such since 1999.
Wimbledon, traditionally a victim of bad summer weather, is to be given a facelift with a new retractable roof over the Centre Court by 2009.
First up on the Centre Court Saturday was scheduled to be Roger Federer, the defending champion and No.1 seed who plays former Australian Open champion Thomas Johansson of Sweden in a third round tie.
To date, the Swiss maestro has lost just nine games in two matches and has been ever more firmly established as the favourite for the title.
Sandwiched in between the Federer and Henman matches on Centre Court was women's top seed and defending champion Serena Williams in a third round tie against Magui Serna of Spain.
Williams has had little difficulty in her two matches to date, but she freely admits that she is still below her best and is relying on brute power rather than artistry to overcome her opponents.
Other top ties see men's second seed Andy Roddick take on American compatriot Taylor Dent in a No.1 Court battle of the big-servers, with France's Amelie Mauresmo, seen as the biggest threat to Serena Williams, going up against Ludmila Cervanova of Slovakia.
