Tennis: Beleagured Wimbledon organisers are confident of finishing on time after less than two hours of play was lost to the weather today. Rain has fallen on eight of the nine days so far and the tournament remains well behind schedule.
The tournament was 177 matches behind after rain interrupted play on seven of the first eight days and no fewer than 142 matches were interrupted by rain.
But eight hours play was possible today and, with a brighter forecast for tomorrow, All England Club officials are hopeful of concluding with the men's doubles final on Sunday.
The two remaining quarter-finals, between teenagers Ana Ivanovic and Nicole Vaidisova and Venus Williams and Svetlana Kuznetsova, will be held tomorrow, which is traditionally ladies' semi-final day.
That means both semi-finals will be held over until Friday, enabling the final to take place as scheduled on Saturday.
Two of the men's quarter-finals will be held tomorrow, 24 hours later than planned, along with the four remaining fourth-round matches.
Defending men's champion Roger Federer will play his first match for six days when he meets Juan Carlos Ferrero on Centre Court while the finalist from the bottom half of the draw will have to play on four successive days.
A let-up in the depressing weather will lift some of the pressure on the All England Club after several of the game's leading past and present players rounded on them for their failure to order play on the middle Sunday.
John McEnroe accused officials of "bungling" their scheduling and world number two Rafael Nadal claimed organisers do not care about the players at Wimbledon.
"I didn't understand some things," said Nadal. "I didn't understand why we didn't play on Sunday. The weather was okay, so much better than yesterday, Monday and today too.
"I didn't understand why they cancelled yesterday when at 8.10pm the sunshine is here for one hour, so we could have played one hour. I didn't understand when we were going to the court to play for 15 minutes and they know because they have the meteo (weather forecast).
"That's very tough for the players. They don't think very much about the players here maybe."
Nadal joined the criticism after finally reaching the fourth round following his on-off marathon against Robin Soderling which was called to Centre Court on Saturday and finally ended, after nine rain interruptions, on Court One this afternoon.
Fourth seed Novak Djokovic, who finished his third-round match against Nicolas Keifer today, will have played on six consecutive days if he reaches Sunday's final.
Andy Roddick kept the American flag flying on Independence Day by completing a 6-2 7-5 7-6 (8-6) victory over Paul-Henri Mathieu on Centre Court.
The Wimbledon third seed had to save set point after going down 5-0 in the a tie break but clawed back the deficit to set up a quarter-final against Richard Gasquet.
Frenchman Gasquet swept aside compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-4 6-3 6-4 on Court One to book his last eight spot.