Rain, rain go away, come back another day – having said that, there was great tennis on the show courts

By Paul Lagan on Centre Court at AELTC.

When the AELTC decided to put a retractable roof on their showcase Centre and No1 courts, it was an expensive decision.

But what’s a few million quid when it allows the top players in the world, and the newly arrived darling of British tennis Emma Raducanu, 18, the chance to ply their trade for the thousands in the stands and the millions watching on TV at home and abroad.

So while the rain tumbled down early on Tuesday morning, preventing play on any outside court, until well into the afternoon, those with tickets for the two top courts knew they were in for an afternoon, and even early evening tennis fest.

The  second Tuesday of the championships tend to be dominated by the woman and children, and the doubles.

But there was a little matter of a men’s quarter-final to be fought for and Hubert Hurkacz and Daniil Medvedev resumed their match on Centre Court having had their previous evening’s encounter on Court 2 suspended for – rain.

Anyhow, it didn’t take long for Hurkacz to finish off the fourth and fifth sets to win 2-6, 7-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Continuing on Centre Court, the Tunisian Ons Jabeur was the crowd’s favourite, but she came up against number two seed Ajla Sabalenka, who was just too powerful with her serve and drives, that all-court Jabeur succumbed 6-4, 6-3.

If that was a tough match, it was tighter, than the score suggests – a bit of a war of attrition, then when it came to the battle of the Aussies between Ashleigh Barty and Ajla Tomljanovic, that followed, well it was a bit of a damp squib. The top seed Barty just sent her opponent – born in Croatia, but flying the Aussie flag, all over the court, and the Ipswich-born – out of Queensland, not Suffolk, England ran out a comfortable winner 6-1, 6-3.

Also winning through to the semi-final was Karolina Pliskova who saw off V Golubic comfortably 6-2, 6-2. She was followed into Thursday’s semi-finals by German Angelique Kerber, a 6-2, 6-3 victor over Czech K Muchova.

The rain did for much of the rest of the day for those for those unfortunates who didn’t have a ticket for Centre  or Court 1, but they had the museum, shops, and numerous food outlets to hang about in. 

The iconic venue for the displaced – Henman Hill, was always available with the ginormous screen to show the action on those lovely, dry show courts.

Oh, and by way of a late addition, on Centre Court, there was a women’s third round doubles match – a bit of a Cold War encounter (ask your parents) where US teenager Coco Gauff and Caly McNally the 12th seeds took on unseeded pair Veronica Kudermetova and Elena Vesnina.

The West lost the first set to a 7-0 tie-break.

But they went 2-0 up early in the second. Successful serves followed successful serves and the West led 5-4 with Gauff serving for the set. She hit the ball wide to bring the game back to deuce, before a fine first serve was whipped into the net. That was repeated on advantge and the West levelled the game one set all.

The West then broke the East in the third set to lead 2-1 on the McNally serve.
But the West was broken to bring the match all-square again at 2-2.

The crowd were loving it, generally unsure who to support, the occasional ‘C’mon Elena’, was quickly countered by a ‘USA, USA’.

Gauff’s net play deserted her on McNally’s serve at 3-4 – she crashed the ball into the net four times in the game and the West was eventually broken, leaving the East in the form of Elena Vesnina serve for the match, which she duly did to 15  to win 7-6, 6-4, 6-3.