WIMBLEDON REPORT : If This Keeps Up, They Might Call It a Wimbledon Wonderland

If the rain and the current pace of play continue, Wimbledon 1991 will end in snow and cold in December. Strawberries and cream will become strawberries and ice cream.

Alan Mills, head referee and the man entrusted with scheduling matches, said late Wednesday that the situation “is not quite critical but getting close.”

Despite Monday’s total washout and the long rain delays Tuesday and Wednesday, Mills still expects the tournament to finish on time this year. He said that unlike events on the regular tennis tour, which are given one day’s leeway to finish, Grand Slam tournaments can “finish when they finish.” In 1922, Wimbledon ended on the third Thursday.

Wimbledon officials are taking measures to catch up by starting earlier in the day and will probably cut men’s doubles matches from best-of-five sets to best-of-three.

Just 18 of Wednesday’s 100 scheduled matches were completed because of the rain, but two of those matches produced upsets.

In men’s play, No. 12 Andrei Cherkasov lost to Richey Reneberg, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4, and the women’s No. 10 seeded player, Helena Sukova, was beaten by Gigi Fernandez, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4.

Both matches had been suspended Tuesday.

Another of the players to complete a match Wednesday was Tami Whitlinger, who beat Bulgaria’s 16-year-old Magdalena Maleeva. Whitlinger won, 6-1, 6-3, breaking Maleeva’s serve for the last time moments before rain stopped play for the day.

“I got to the round of 16 at the French Open,” Whitlinger said, “and that’s what I’m shooting for here.”

Among those also winning were second-seeded Gabriela Sabatini, who defeated Monique Javer of Hillsborough, 6-4, 6-0, and ninth-seeded Jennifer Capriati, who came back twice from a break down in the second set to defeat Shaun Stafford, 6-0, 7-5.

Perhaps the only thing funnier than the weather here is the way they do the weather forecasts, such as in this printed handout:

“As you probably realize, it is another day with more rain forecast. The difficulties are: 1. Will there be any rain before the main rain belt arrives? 2. How heavy and persistent will the rain be when it arrives? 3. How heavy will it be and when will it clear? At this stage, all of the answers are uncertain.”

And in another:

“In a few words (actually, the entire report took 361 words), today’s weather will be sunny periods and showers with perhaps the showers turning up at any time but most of the time will be dry. However in detail it is not quite as straightforward as this and it may be that the showers become organized into bands with only a few if any showers between these bands.”

No, Wimbledon’s weatherman is not Norm Crosby. Probably a distant relative.