A national power outage opened Madrid on Monday for a stay in which the players were forced, including Britain’s Jacob Fernley, out of court in the midst of matches.
Fernley, who saved a match point in his third round encounter against Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, was to serve to stay in the match below 6-4, 5-4, when power cuts hit the main court.
Outage disabled the electronic line-jolting system and scoreboard, stopping the proceedings.
Initially, the authorities planned to continue to play with an umpire manual line call.
However, a spider camera, which is less hanging in the court, was stuck in the players’ iline, which further delayed. Eventually, the umpire took the players away from the court and back to the locker room.
The announcement was made on the official Instagram page of Madrid Open.
Spain’s power grid operator, Red Elatrica, confirmed widespread power across the country and said efforts were underway to restore the service.
Grid monitoring company E-Reds described the blackout as part of a comprehensive European problem, given that the power was being re-installed in the stages.
There was disintegration beyond tennis courts. Reports indicated that the traffic lights in Madrid got out, causing traffic jams, while parts of the city’s underground railway system were evacuated.
A similar outage was reported in Portugal, where the metro system in Lisbon and Porto was discontinued and train services were suspended.
Scotland Fernley is one of the three British men who are scheduled to compete in the third round in Madrid on Monday.
Cameron Nori is ready to face Canada’s Gabriel Dialo, while the British number one Jack Draper is scheduled to be taken to Matteo Beretini, Italy.
