Emma Raducanu has made a solid start to the grass-court season. She has reached the quarterfinals of the HSBC Championships after straight-set victories over Anna Blinkova and Sorana Cirstea. But the weather has been a constant thorn in her side at the event so far. Notably, Raducanu’s clash against Cirstea had to be shifted from Thursday to Friday due to persistent rain. The weather only increased the Brit’s problems ahead of her quarterfinal match against Kamilla Rakhimova.

After defeating Cirstea 6-4, 6-2 on Friday, Raducanu was supposed to return to the court later that night for her clash against Rakhimova. However, with the match scheduled for a late start and the UK broadcasters only showing one court at a time in their coverage, the organizers decided to shift it to Saturday. This means that if Raducanu advances in the quarterfinals, then her semis clash will take place later during the same day. These matches would happen within just a few hours of each other and would leave Raducanu exhausted.

The QF clash between Raducanu and Rakhimova was the only one that wasn’t played on Friday. Winners of the other matches were decided on the same day, with the likes of Iva Jovic, Katie Boulter, and Donna Vekic making it to the semis.

The HSBC Championships have been thrown into such chaos because of the weather. Rain has been a constant obstacle for players throughout the tournament, and it has made its presence felt from the first day. Multiple matches had to be suspended because of the rain, including the clash between Leylah Fernandez and Katie Boulter that remained unresolved and was eventually decided on Tuesday.

Things only became worse by Wednesday as the rain kept on delaying matches even further. The tournament’s schedule was affected the most on Thursday, as not a single point was played on the courts due to the constant rain. This meant that all the singles and doubles matches scheduled to take place on Thursday, got delayed to Friday.

This massive delay created major scheduling problems for the organizers. According to the original schedule, all the R16 matches should have been completed by Thursday, but they got delayed to the next day. As a result, the organizers had no choice but to squeeze the quarterfinal clashes on the same day as the R16 matches took place. This led to many players playing two matches on Friday.

The match that faced the biggest delay due to the rain was undoubtedly the R16 clash between Donna Vekic and Marie Bouzkova. Their match had begun on June 10, Wednesday but the winner of the match was decided two days later.

Match faces a 42-hour delay at the HSBC Championships due to rain

The match eventually came to a conclusion on June 12, Friday with Vekic winning 7-6, 6-3. A total of 11 games were played on Court 5 as the clash commenced on Wednesday. Vekic was leading 6-5 in the first set when rain took over and forced the match to be delayed until the next day.

All the matches got washed out on Thursday due to persistent rain, meaning that the clash between Vekic and Bouzkova had to be delayed to Friday. Fortunately, the weather wouldn’t interrupt the match again as it finally got resumed after 42 hours.

The first set was dragged to a tiebreaker where Vekic showed her resilience and won 11-9 to take the first set 7-6. She maintained this momentum in the second set and finished off the match by breaking Bouzkova’s serve for the third time in the match. The Croatian took the set 6-3 to advance to the quarterfinals.

Vekic then faced-off against Karolina Pliskova later during the night session. The World No. 76 kept her campaign alive at the HSBC Championships with a hard-fought 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 victory.

Having entered the tournament as a lucky loser following Marta Kostyuk’s withdrawal, Vekic has made it all the way to the semis. She is now set to face Katie Boulter at the Andy Murray arena later on Saturday.