The Madrid Open was forced to suspend play on Monday after the tennis tournament was hit by the vast power outage across Spain and Portugal.
The 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and his British opponent Jacob Fearnley had to leave the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power. The round-of-32 match at the Manolo Santana Stadium – where Dimitrov led Fearnley 6-4, 5-4 – had to be stopped due to a spidercam being left hanging too close to the court.
Fourth seed Coco Gauff, who beat Belinda Bencic 6-4, 6-2 to reach the quarter-finals, had her post-match interview at the Arantxa Sanchez Stadium cut short with the microphone losing power. Electronic line calling systems were also affected by the power cut, the ATP said, while spectators shared pictures of dark hallways at the Manzanares Park Tennis Center.
A British fan, Siobhan Baker, told The Independent: “We were in the centre court watching Jacob Fearnley and Gregor Dimitrov [when] the TV screens went out so they suspended play. They couldn’t resume play because the camera is … dangling over one side of the court.
“We went out to grab a beer assuming that it was just here and the electricity was going to be back on quite quickly. When we went inside, on the stairs, that’s all quite dark. Some of the emergency lights are back on. There was briefly no water so you couldn’t flush the toilets or anything but that’s back on now.
“When it first happened, we thought it was fine because we have day tickets and there were meant to be an number of games on today. But as the hours have ticked on, we just want to watch tennis now. The card machines to buy any food and drink aren’t working and we only have 20 euro which has gone now.”
The ATP said in a statement: “Two singles matches and one doubles match at the ATP Masters 1000 event were underway when power was lost at 12:34 pm local time.”
Matteo Arnaldi, who upset Novak Djokovic on Saturday, was up 6-3, 3-2 against Damir Dzumhur when the round of 32 match was stopped, with the Italian eventually prevailing in 6,3 6-4 as the match continued with the umpire calling the lines.
The rest of the day’s play was eventually postponed entirely “in order to guarantee the safety of the players, fans and personnel at the Caja Magica,” the organisers said.
Local media said the power outage also affected traffic lights, some airports and part of the Madrid underground. Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica said it was working with energy companies to restore power.
Additional reporting by Reuters
