The intense rain that punished this Brazilian city on Thursday night forced the organizers of the Rio de Janeiro Open to postpone for Friday the last two round of 16 matches of the only ATP 500 tournament in South America.
The rain forced the referees to interrupt the match in which the Spanish Carlos Alcaraz beat the Argentine Federico Delbonis 5-4 and, despite the fact that the organizers waited for nearly three hours for the weather conditions to allow it to resume, they chose to announce its postponement to midnight.
This is because, despite the fact that the rain finally gave a truce at the end of the night, the main field was completely flooded and in no condition to allow the games to resume.
At the time the postponement was announced, only three of the eight matches scheduled for this Thursday had been played, which were four in the round of 16 of the individual competition and four in the quarterfinals of the pairs competition.
In addition to the meeting between Alcaraz and Delbonis that would define one of those classified for the quarterfinals, which was not completed, the one that would face the Italian Matteo Berrettini, the sixth best tennis player in the world and the first favorite in Rio de Janeiro, with the Brazilian Thiago Monteiro (106 ATP), Brazil’s number one racket.
According to the organizers, the match between Berrettini and Monteiro for the round of 16 will be played starting at 2:30 p.m. local time (5:30 p.m. GMT) on Friday, at the end of which Alcaraz and Delbonis will return to the field to conclude their duel.
As the quarterfinal matches were confirmed for Friday night, the winners of both round of 16 matches will have to play two singles matches on the same day.
Alcaraz, the 18-year-old Spanish promise, could be forced to play three matches on the same day unless he renounces the pairs competition, in which he plays alongside his compatriot Pablo Carreño Busta.
Both had to face this Thursday the couple made up of the Spanish Marcelo Granollers and the Argentine Horacio Zeballos for the quarterfinals, but the match did not even start because of the rain.
The one who did manage to take advantage of the good weather was the Argentine Francisco Cerúndolo (100 ATP), who advanced this Thursday to the quarterfinals of the Rio de Janeiro Open after eliminating the Spanish Roberto Carballés (78 ATP) 2-0, with partial 6-3 and 6-2.
The Argentine will have to face the Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic (70 ATP) on Friday in the quarterfinals in Rio, who this Thursday eliminated the Italian Lorenzo Sonego (21 ATP), the sixth favorite in Rio de Janeiro, 7-6 and 6- Four.
In the eighth matches played on Wednesday, the Argentines Diego Schwartzman (15 ATP) and Federico Coria (63 ATP), the Spanish Pablo Andújar (74 ATP) and the Italian Fabio Fognini (38 ATP) guaranteed places in the quarterfinals.
Schwarzman, third favorite in the Brazilian tournament, will face Andújar on Friday for a place in the semifinals, while Coria will have to face Fognini.