Dubai: Former world No. 26 Lukas Rosol was the only qualifier coming through on the second day of men’s qualifying as rain played spoilsport at the Dubai Tennis Championships on Sunday.
The 31-year-old Rosol — most famous for his defeat of Rafael Nadal in 2012 at Wimbledon — took just 58 minutes to secure a 7-5, 6-1 win over Vincent Millot of France and become the first man to make it into the main draw of the competition that is scheduled to get under way from Monday.
The only completed match was completed by 1pm, after which the skies opened and no further play was possible for the remainder of Sunday.
Fortunately, the weather forecast for the next few days of the week is quite favourable with bright and sunny skies on Monday and Tuesday followed by mostly sunny skies with part cloud cover on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Salah Talak, Tournament Director, had officially called off play for the day and released the order of play for Monday that will see the final round of qualifying being held from 11am onwards.
Hani El Khafief, Chief of Officials, was appreciative of all the hard work put in over the past two days by the court services team led by Laith Al Ani. “Saturday was the most difficult day in the history of the Dubai Tennis Championships. We had as many as nine interruptions in play and we used more than 1,200 towels to clean up the courts every time it stopped raining. But the court services team didn’t give up. They just came and cheerfully did such a fantastic job,” El Khafief said.
“Hats off to them all and we cannot thank them enough. Luckily, we had a better weather forecast for the rest of the week and we can enjoy some good tennis as well,” he added.
