By Shrivathsa Sridhar
LONDON (Reuters) – The Wimbledon mixed doubles final originally scheduled for Thursday will be played three days later, organisers said on Tuesday, as they revised the schedule due to steady rain that has caused a backlog on the All England Club outside courts.
Although the action has continued under the roofs on Centre Court and Court One, several first-round mixed doubles matches have not been finished due to wet weather on the opening eight days at the grasscourt Grand Slam.
The mixed doubles final will follow the men’s singles final on Sunday, while the men’s and women’s doubles finals will take place after the women’s singles final on Saturday.
“This gives us the maximum flexibility to complete the Championships on time and to play all of the respective finals on Centre Court,” tournament director Jamie Baker said.
The attendance in the first week of the tournament also dipped from 293,681 last year to 282,955 visitors, down by 3.7% and chief executive Sally Bolton blamed the rain.
“The weather has been so terrible that perseverance in the queue has been even greater this year than it ordinarily is,” Bolton told reporters on Monday.
“We’re never about maximising our attendances, we’re all about protecting the queue and making sure that we have still got that accessibility, accepting that as a result of that was some variability on the numbers that we will end up achieving.
“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.”
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar, editing by Ed Osmond)
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