It felt like Wimbledon, says Mario Ancic

Mumbai: The first six days at the inaugural Kingfisher Airlines Open went without a hitch. But the organisers’ luck ran out on the day of the grand finale.

The heavens had opened up from late Saturday night. It rained almost non-stop till the afternoon. There was a dry spell for an hour or so, though the sky remained ominously grey all along. With the showers returning around 6 pm, ATP supervisor Ed Hardisty took a call shortly afterwards and called off play.

The two finals have been rescheduled to Monday, with the start being brought forward by an hour to 4 pm. If there’s no tennis on Monday as well, all the finalists will be declared runners-up and awarded prize-money ($30,600 each for singles and $ 9600 each for doubles) and points (120 ATP Entry and 24 Race) earmarked for finalists.

For the record, third seed Tomas Berdych of Czech Republic have qualified for the final along with Russian No. 4 Dmitry Tursunov. In the doubles final, Mahesh Bhupathi and Mario Ancic are up against the scratch Indian combination of Rohan Bopanna and Mustafa Ghouse.

As tournament director Gaurav Natekar explained, there is a buffer for all ATP events to be completed on Mondays. All six finalists will be hoping for some dry weather, though the forecast isn’t too bright. Covers from the Brabourne Stadium cricket pitch may be used for the centre court on Monday morning.

The tournament staff did try to get the centre court ready for play when the raingods relented around 4.30 pm. Sponges and squeezers were used to wipe away the water from the Plexipave and vacuum cleaner to dry the surface. “The court was 70 per cent dry before the showers came back,” Natekar said.

The ATP supervisor had initially wanted to wait till 7.30 pm before taking a decision. But with the crowd building up, braving the inclement weather, Hardisty called off play at 6.15 pm. “It would have made no sense to make them wait for another hour when it was quite clear that we wouldn’t be able to start,” he explained.

The momentum had built up nicely after Super Saturday when about 3000 people had turned up at the CCI. The weather couldn’t have played spoilsport on a worse day.

Ancic, the only player to have turned up to have a look at the court, said he was used to such rainy weather.

“It felt like Wimbledon. Anyone who has played Wimbledon even once would have experienced such weather… I’ve seen such rainy days elsewhere also. There’s not much players can do on such days but to hang around and hope for the clouds to go away,” the popular Croat told The Telegraph while leaving the CCI.

The organisers will also be counting the additional expenses, which would come up to around $15,000. “Such things can’t be budgeted, we have to pay from our pockets,” said Bhupathi, the Globosport MD.

He’ll be keeping fingers crossed for Monday, when he has a great chance to clinch his 39th career doubles crown. For next year, too, hoping there is no repeat of damp Sunday.