Wimbledon changes finals plan and confirms rain 'last resort'

Jamie Murray (left) is a two-time Wimbledon mixed doubles champion

Wimbledon bosses revealed a new plan for completing the tournament on schedule as rain continued to cause a major backlog of matches.

The mixed doubles final was meant to be played on Thursday but has been put back to Sunday.

That event is so far behind schedule that nine first-round matches had yet to be completed by Tuesday afternoon because of wet weather delays.

Seven of the first nine days of this year's tournament have had matches scratched from the order of play because of rain delays, with the doubles events particularly hard hit.

Tournament director Jamie Baker said the women's doubles final will take place on Saturday instead of Sunday, to accommodate the mixed final moving.

Baker said of the revised plans: "This gives us the maximum flexibility to complete the Championships on time and to play all of the respective finals on Centre Court."

Chief executive Sally Bolton is confident the tournament will get back on track and finish by Sunday evening.

"We now have an extra day, we've got the two roofs, so, in terms of resilience to get through the Championships, we're confident we can still do that despite the continuing variability of the weather," said Bolton.

Wimbledon will hope to complete the entirety of the tournament on grass - but there is a plan they could reluctantly activate if that becomes impractical.

The All England Club has a large indoor tennis centre across the road from the main site which it could use, although the courts are hard rather than grass.

"We've got a range of contingencies. Going indoors is one of those options but that really would be a bit of a last resort," Bolton said.

Wimbledon changed from a 13-day to a 14-day tournament two years ago with the addition of play on its middle Sunday, when previously play only took place in the event of a desperate backlog.

Organisers have already made a change to the mixed doubles format in an effort to shorten matches - going from the best of three full sets to having matches decided on a 10-point tie-break if teams are level after two sets.

The attendance in the first week of the tournament dipped from 293,681 last year to 282,955 visitors, down by 3.7%, and Bolton blamed the rain.

"This year the weather has been so variable and so bad at times, that at the moment our assessment is it's almost certainly the weather that's impacting it," said Bolton.

Less rain ahead

There might be a reprieve for the tournament over the next few days as the latest BBC Weather forecast for the rest of week suggests there will be less rain and more dry spells in SW19.