Wimbledon, being one of the oldest tournaments not only in tennis but also in the sports world as a whole, has quite a few rules and regulations attached to it. Other than its all-white outfit tradition for the players, there is a rule where players must be off court by a hard deadline of 11 p.m. Just a few days ago, America’s Taylor Fritz didn’t look too pleased seeing his match getting suspended at 10:18 pm. Reacting to this incident, later through a social media post, he wrote, “They would’ve let us play if my opponent (Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard) agreed to, I said I wanted to he didn’t.” Recently, a similar incident took place in Ben Shelton’s match as well!

But the difference is that this time, both players were on the same page! On Thursday, Ben Shelton was taking on Australia’s Rinky Hijikata in the second round of the 2025 Wimbledon. The American started off the match quite impressively, winning the first set by 6-2, before securing the second one by 7-5. However, just when Shelton was nearing to secure an emphatic victory at 5-4 in the third set, a sudden announcement was made by the chair umpire.

At 9:29 pm, just when Ben Shelton was going to serve for the match, the umpire said, “Ladies and gentlemen, play is suspended due to darkness.” Hearing this, the crowd inside the stadium started to jeer, and Shelton looked extremely frustrated with the decision as well. Just when he was approaching the chair umpire, an official had intervened and directed him away. Interestingly, both Shelton and Hijikata had previously agreed to suspend the match before the start of the third set, citing slippery conditions at the back of the court. But the umpire had then decided to go on with the match. Although this stop and start didn’t impact much on the result as he defeated Hijikata by 6-2,7-5,6-4, however, this means that the American will now have relatively less time to recover before his third round match. What does he have to say on this, though?

Well, in his post-match press conference, a journalist said to him that he looked hugely frustrated at being stopped from finishing his match. She asked her what it was like for him to have to come back today and whether he had faced this situation before. In reply to this, Ben Shelton said, “No, I mean it’s my third or fourth time playing over two days at Wimbledon. It’s something that’s normal that you’re used to when you’re at a tournament, where you kind of have to stop when the sun goes down, or if there’s enough rain in the day, you have to stop. It’s normal, especially playing this long format.”

Having said that, he admitted that something, sometimes, that’s just the way things shake out, but he claimed, “To stop when you’re serving for the match isn’t as ideal, I though. We could’ve stopped earlier. My opponent was comparing since the end of the second set.” Ben Shelton felt that things could’ve been a bit better if the match had been stopped at that time itself. However, he also added, “I understand the tournament has to make whatever decision they have to make, and us as players, we just have to kind of go along with it. So, yeah, it’s normal. It’s part of tennis. Everything is not going to be the same, whether it’s weather conditions, whether it’s sin going down, it’s just normal things that you have to deal with.“

American fans would be happy that despite this stoppage, Shelton managed to start off the match on Friday from where he left off on the previous day. Even Ben Shelton himself admitted that he’s happy with the way he handled it, coming out on Friday and taking care of his own business. He said, although this stop and start may not be a big deal for him physically, however, he thinks this is not ideal mentally to wake up another day and know that it’s a matchday.

During his post-match press conference, Ben Shelton also opened up about why his match was suspended on Thursday when he was just one game away from securing the victory. Speaking about it, he revealed that he was told that the electronic system would’ve stopped working in five minutes. Although he told them he only needed one game and it would take a minute, they didn’t want to risk it malfunctioning midway through the game. Would having a human line judge have made things a bit different? Maybe!

How did the tennis world react to this incident surrounding Ben Shelton’s second-round match?

Well, tennis analyst CoCo Vandeweghe shared in Shelton’s displeasure with the decision. The former American tennis player also brought up the point that the delay would result in Ben Shelton not getting a normal day off before his next match. Tournament director Jamie Baker also understood the reason behind Shelton’s frustration.

In an interview, Baker admitted, “He had match point, didn’t he? I would be pretty unhappy as well. But, yeah, he’s in a good position.” But having said that, he claimed that they had already extended play as far as they were comfortable with. “Off the top of my head, I don’t know the exact time. But we have been playing really late this week because the weather has been great, the skies have been clear, and last night we pushed it as far as we possibly could.“

Even three-time Wimbledon champion Boris Becker’s reaction to this incident. He looked a bit surprised to see the officials deciding to suspend the match when both players wanted to continue. “[Ben Shelton] was about to serve for the match and never lost his serve in the entire match. Nobody understands the referee’s decision,” he wrote in his tweet.

Other than Becker, even Mardy Fish shared his thoughts on this incident through a tweet. He came with an interesting prediction for Shelton on the next day’s play. Fish wrote, “Ain’t a doubt in my mind that Ben will come out and bust four aces. Little hit and giggle tomorrow, stud.” Ben Shelton fired 11 aces in that match, and with that, his number of aces in his two matches at Wimbledon has gone up to 26. Staggering! Can he put up a similar dominating performance in his third-round match against Marton Fucsovics? Check out EssentiallySports’ minute by minute update of the Championships on our Live Blog.