Tennis: Attendances Collapse As Repeated Rain Scares Away a Flood of Fans

The All England Club is likely to record its lowest Wimbledon attendance in a decade, after another miserable day of persistent and occasionally torrential rain in south-west London left the 2007 tournament 177 matches behind schedule and facing further delays in the coming days.

At the conclusion of an eighth day as notable for the savage downpours and lightning warnings as it was for the tennis, a total of 289,852 spectators had come through the gates. The current total is more than 11,000 fewer than last year and less than in any year since 1998, the year after the new, expanded Court One was first used.

In that year bad weather meant spectators saw less than two hours' play on five of the first seven days. Thus far only a single day of the 2007 event has seen so little tennis played, but with a desperate forecast for the coming days few at the All England Club are confidently predicting a Sunday finish to a troubled championships.

An indicator of the tournament's current troubles was the rescheduling of one of the most eagerly anticipated matches of the week, the fourth-round meeting of Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams, to Court Three. They completed three points before rain forced them off, and have been moved to the Center Court today.

The forecast for the rest of the week remains dismal, with further downpours likely today. "It's utterly ghastly," Andrew Jarrett, the tournament referee, said of the weather. "We are doing everything we can to get the tournament finished." He added that trying to make anyone play more than one match in a day was "something we would fight against".

The fall in attendances is a result of fewer spectators taking advantage of the resale of show-court tickets, a process which usually boosts attendance above the official 36,000 capacity. Yesterday's attendance was 32,022.

In 1999 all four men's and women's semi-finals were played on the Saturday, with both finals played on the Sunday. Two men's finals have been played on the third Monday: in 1988 Stefan Edberg beat Boris Becker after playing only five games on the Sunday, and in 2001 Goran Ivanisevic beat Pat Rafter in the first final to be played entirely on the Monday.

Ian Ritchie, chief executive of the All England Club, acknowledged that the constant interruptions had adversely affected the championships. "Clearly the weather and the stop-start nature of the rain has been frustrating for the players, the spectators and everyone involved," he said. "Ultimately there is very little we can do about the weather, but we are building a roof for Center Court, which will ensure we get at least four matches a day."