A F M Asad Ullah: The Madrid Open tennis tournament came to a standstill midway due to a national power outage. Several players, including Britain’s Jacob Fearnley, were forced to leave the court. Fearnley was competing against Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov in the third round. After saving a match point, Fearnley was trailing 6-4, 5-4 and preparing to serve when the main court’s play was abruptly halted due to the blackout.
The power outage rendered the electronic line-calling system and the scoreboard inoperative. After a brief pause, the umpire announced that he would manually make the line calls, and the match would resume. However, issues arose when the hanging ‘spider camera’ got stuck, obstructing the players’ view and disrupting the normal playing environment.
Ultimately, the umpire decided to send the players back to the locker room.
Spain’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, confirmed a nationwide power outage and assured that efforts were underway to restore normalcy. In Madrid, traffic signals went dark, and metro services were partially disrupted. Reports of power outages also emerged from neighboring Portugal.
In addition to Scotland’s Fearnley, two other British players, Cameron Norrie and Jack Draper, are scheduled to compete in the third round of the Madrid Open on Monday. Norrie will face Canada’s Gabriel Diallo, while Draper is set to play against Italy’s Matteo Berrettini.
