Eat, sleep or look at the roof: how players cope with match delays

Carlos Alcaraz calls the wait 'horrible', while delays at Wimbledon caused scary issues for Emma Raducanu

- Tumaini Carayol

The greatest challenge for Carlos Alcaraz in his third-round match at the Cincinnati Open was simply remaining sane. Before Alcaraz and Hamad Medjedovic, his opponent, took to the court, they had no choice but to wait as Francisco Comesaña and the big-serving Reilly Opelka worked through a tumultuous three-hour, three-set contest full of manic momentum shifts, medical time-outs and a last-minute rain delay for good measure. Alcaraz and Medjedovic had no idea when their match would begin, yet a large part of their job is making sure they are always ready.

A few hours later, after closing out a straightforward victory, Alcaraz chuckled bitterly from a quiet hallway inside Center Court as he reflected on his hours of preparation, which turned out to be more stressful than the match itself. "Well, it sucks," he said, smiling. "Having to warm up three, four times, it's horrible. A horrible thing. I thought having Opelka in front of me was going to be a little bit faster. I didn't expect a three-hour match."

His experience was a reflection of one of the unique challenges of tennis. Aside from at the beginning of a day or session, matches usually have no fixed start time. In order to be successful, players must remain focused through this uncertainty.

Karen Khachanov, the men's world No 12, says: "We can go in all sports: NHL, American football or soccer. They know the whole season when they start - which game, against who and where. In tennis, this is the toughest part. You need to adapt to the circumstances."

The unique nature of the scoring system makes things even more challenging. A match can completely flip at any time and a player can come within a point of winning a match yet still be on court hours later. Almost every player can instantly think of an occasion when the match directly before theirs significantly frustrated them.