The scheduling of the men's semi-finals on Saturday was called into question by the inability to complete the second match before a forecasted storm washed out play. Spanish world number one Rafael Nadal and sixth-seeded Andy Murray completing their match on Sunday afternoon, with Murray advancing to the men's final against Rodger Federer, pushed to Monday.
"We were told we had a window through approximately five o'clock," Curley told reporters. "We made our decisions based on the information we had available from the weather service and our on-site meteorologist".
The first semi-final between Federer and Novak Djokovic began at 11 am - about an hour earlier than normally scheduled, whilst organisers shifted the Nadal-Murray match to an adjacent court in hopes of completing both before the storm set in. The second semi-final, however, started one hour 40 minutes later, a decision which Curley defended on grounds of fairness to fans, crowd control and ‘other considerations’ - understood as a euphemism for TV scheduling demands.
Curley told Reuters that the integrity of competition was of uppermost importance to organisers, but added that: "At the same time other considerations need to come into play. And that would be 23,000 people coming and wanting to see the number one, two, three, and six players in the world, and if you split them up (the matches) you're not going to have that opportunity”.
