Wimbledon’s Murray-Tsitsipas match of the day is now match of the days

It was probably the weather. Or the coming weekend. But much of the crowd purchased their tickets ahead of time, and they have no way of telling who’s going to be on the schedule, after all.

And on the Thursday schedule was a second-round clash between Andy Murray and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Let’s hope some of them bought tickets for Friday as well.

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The sea of humanity that showed up for the tennis here saw only the front end of a brewing cage match as one of Wimbledon’s many quirks set in to stop the show and plunge the tournament’s already mucked-up schedule into further chaos. There is an 11 p.m. curfew at Wimbledon, and when the second-set tiebreaker in the Murray-Tsitsipas match arrived shortly after 9:40 p.m., after 1 hour 54 minutes of play, it seemed there might be trouble.

Tournament officials halted the match at 10:39 p.m. local time. The break might have fallen at a natural stopping point — Murray had just captured the third set to lead 6-7 (7-3), 7-6 (7-2), 6-4 — if there had not been such drama directly before the break.

With the curfew inching closer and Centre Court erupting with every point, Murray took a wrong step serving at 40-15 and fell to the ground, grabbing his groin and screaming in agony as he rolled over, losing the point. After he righted himself awkwardly and stood to serve, Tsitsipas did him a massive favor and sent a return long. Set, Murray.

Even Murray’s mother, Judy, who has seen her share of events on Centre Court, shook her head in disbelief at that.

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Tsitsipas and Murray’s postponement muddles an already crowded Friday schedule on Centre Court. Play does not begin until 1:30 p.m. on the tournament’s biggest stage, and officials must squeeze in two full men’s singles matches and one full women’s singles match in addition to potentially two remaining sets of Murray-Tsitsipas.

Those lucky ticket holders may never leave their seats: Top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz is set to open play against Alexandre Muller, followed by the resumption of Murray-Tsitsipas. Top-seeded Iga Swiatek then faces 30th-seeded Petra Martic, all of it a lead up to a real humdinger of a closing act: Novak Djokovic against Stan Wawrinka in the final match of the day.

That’s a lot to cram in in less than 10 hours.

But cram they must because Wimbledon’s schedule is, beg pardon, shot to hell….