Rain could drive the Championships into the middle of next week, with play continuing as late as Wednesday. Officials convened an emergency meeting on Tuesday night after showers again forced an end to proceedings that were already far behind schedule.

“It’s ghastly,” Andrew Jarrett, the tournament referee, said, emerging hours later to announce that Wimbledon was 178 matches behind schedule. “We will do everything we can to complete the Championship on time.” His decision not to schedule matches for the middle Sunday of the tournament has already been called into question. “Let’s see where we are this time tomorrow,” he said.

Wednesday should have been the start of the men’s quarter finals. Instead, Rafael Nadal and Robin Söderling resumed their third-round match at noon, 92 hours after they began on Saturday (Nadal finally won 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 4-6, 7-5 on Wednesday).

The showers that are forecast and the thunderstorms that are expected over the weekend look likely to push that final into next week, which has occurred only twice in the modern era. Meanwhile, the last time the whole circus ran through to a third Wednesday was in 1922, when the All England Club had only a single tarpaulin and the outer courts became a quagmire.

The prospect of a repeat was described by officials as an “organisational nightmare”. The All England Club would have to fork out huge sums to retain many of its 5,000 staff and pay for security and policing. Players due elsewhere in the world would need to be detained.