So, picture this: Madrid Open, tennis madness, sun blazing (or maybe it wasn’t, I can’t really remember), and bam! Lights out—literally. The whole place went dark because of some national power outage. Can you believe it? They had to call it a day because, well, safety first and all that.
The chaos didn’t stop there. All of Spain and Portugal, or a big chunk anyway, just froze in time around noon. Trains and buses stood still, folks couldn’t buy their morning coffee because card machines died (the horror!), and phones? Yeah, good luck with that. Though rumor has it power started creeping back in some spots. Fingers crossed!
Apparently, the culprit was this weird weather thingy. Crazy, right? The Portuguese energy guys—REN, I think—said it was some rare atmospheric mumbo jumbo with temperature flips. Weather does what it wants, huh?
Meanwhile, on the court, Jacob Fearnley, this British player, was hanging on by a thread against Grigor Dimitrov. Imagine the drama—he saves match point, ready to serve at 5-4—then poof, darkness. The fancy electronic line-call system? Useless. Scoreboards? Nada.
At first, they were like, let’s wing it, and the umpire thought he’d just make the calls himself. Seemed simple enough until the spider camera—a real pain today—got stuck, dangling right in the players’ faces. I mean, seriously, just suspended there like some intrusive art installation. Not helpful.
Discussions happened—probably lots of dramatic gesturing—and next thing you know, everyone trooped back to the locker rooms. And that’s how Fearnley’s almost epic comeback got paused by the universe pulling the plug. Plus, it gave everyone a reason to complain, which is always a plus in these wild situations.
