A national power outage abruptly stopped play at the Madrid Open, impacting Briton Jacob Fearnley’s crucial third-round match against Grigor Dimitrov.
Fearnley was down 6-4, 5-4 and about to serve to stay in the match after saving a match point when the blackout occurred.
The power cut disabled the electronic line-calling system and scoreboards.
While the umpire initially announced play would restart with manual line calls, a stuck spider camera forced a further suspension.
Spain’s Red Electrica confirmed widespread power outages nationwide, affecting traffic lights and the Madrid metro.
A similar outage hit Portugal.
Fearnley is one of three British men in Madrid’s third round, with Cameron Norrie and Jack Draper also due to play today.
The power issue has thrown the match schedule into doubt.
