Boris Becker was left baffled by Wimbledon’s decision to suspend a second-round clash as a player was about to serve for the match.
American tennis star Ben Shelton was ready to serve for a place in the third round after opening up a 6-2 7-5 5-4 lead over Australia’s Rinky Hijikata.
But the chair umpire suspended play for bad light at 9.29pm on Thursday evening, forcing the players to return to the All England Club and complete the match on Friday afternoon.
Shelton, who was yet to be broken by Hijikata, was furious with the decision and had to be prevented from approaching the chair umpire by another match official.
Three-time Wimbledon champion Becker also criticised the decision, writing on X: ‘Why suspend the match when both players want to continue?
‘Ben Shelton was about to serve for the match and never lost his serve in the entire match!!! Nobody understands the referee’s decision!’
It took Shelton just 70 seconds to finish the match when play was resumed on Friday, the American winning four straight points to book his place in the third round.
A number of fans and pundits criticised the ‘unbelievable’ decision but it was suggested that it was too dark for Electronic Line Calling to operate on Court Two.
This year’s Championships are the first in 148 years to be played without line judges.
Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker has since defended the call, insisting it had become ‘extremely dark’ by the time play was called suspended.
‘Off the top of my head, I don’t know the exact time,’ Baker said.
‘But we have been playing really late this week because the weather has been great, the skies have been clear, and last night we pushed it as far as we possibly could.
‘If one of the players had said to us that they were uncomfortable kind of 20-25 minutes before, we would we would have stopped the match. And ultimately we did as much as we possibly could.
‘At 5-4, we got to the point where, look, there’s a team of officials looking after the match, and they were just looking at the ground and thinking, look, actually for the pinnacle tennis tournament in the world, we just — we pushed this as far as we were comfortable with.
‘It was almost completely dark. We can’t have players playing in the dark.’
Shelton will face Marton Fucsovics in the next round after the Hungarian defeated popular Frenchman Gael Monfils in a five-set second-round match that was also played over two days.
The 22-year-old is bidding to reach the second week of Wimbledon for the first time following an impressive run to the Australian Open semi-finals at the start of the year.
Speaking in his on-court interview, Shelton said: ‘For me, I thought it was a great match and I thought Rinky played really well.
‘My shot-making was really high last night, the crowd was in it. I’m not sure how many of you guys were in the crowd last night but thanks everybody for staying late and then coming back.
‘For me, very different playing over two days, coming out for what was it, 55 seconds today! I was hoping to maybe hit a few groundstrokes today!
‘I might have to go to the practice courts then. Overall I couldn’t be more happy being in the third round of Wimbledon.’
On the controversial suspension, Shelton added: ‘It’s just one of those tournaments, you’ve got to be able to adjust on the fly, get used to stopping, starting, warming up.
‘I’m sorry that you guys didn’t really get to see much tennis! No rallies but hopefully the rest of the matches today and hopefully my match tomorrow you guys see a little bit more tennis.’
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