Players the Last Concern for a Place Where Tv Calls the Tune

Andy Murray was not a happy man when the first raindrops fell on Saturday, disrupting his semi-final match against Rafael Nadal, but the Scot had no reason to be surprised. The remnants of Hurricane Hanna had been predicted to arrive over Flushing Meadows at 3pm and they duly did, albeit 10 minutes early.

Within an hour, the US Tennis Association called a halt to play, sending the crowds home, the players back to their hotels and the tennis detectives off in pursuit of a explanation for the scheduling cock-up that handed Roger Federer a significant advantage over the man he will face in today's US Open final.

"In hindsight, that would have been the right call, but if every decision was based on [im]pending rain...," said Arlen Kantarian, the chief executive of the USTA, when pressed repeatedly to justify the decision to stagger the start of Saturday's semi-finals despite a weather forecast that meant there was little hope of completing both matches before the downfall came.

The problem, according to USTA officials, was an ever-changing forecast that initially suggested the bad weather wouldn't settle over Flushing until the evening. But when Saturday dawned so came a bulletin from the meteorologists saying Hurricane Hanna had rescheduled her arrival for 3pm. Forewarned but clearly lacking foresight, the USTA pushed forward the Federer-Djokovic semi-final by an hour, to 11am.

The sensible move would have been to start the Murray-Nadal match at the same time on the neighboring Louis Armstrong Stadium but the tournament organizers held off, citing the demands of the 23,000 ticket holders in the Arthur Ashe Stadium (who had paid money to see two semis) and the needs of the American TV network CBS, which pays the USTA $35 million a year to broadcast the tournament and which had hoped to show the two semi-finals live, one after the other.

"We have to take into consideration the broadcasters," said tournament director Jim Curley. In the circumstances, this sounded like the understatement of the tennis year.

With the skies darkening it emerged that Murray-Nadal would start at 12.40pm in the Armstrong Stadium, an announcement that sent spectators scurrying across the grounds of the Flushing Meadows in the hope of getting a seat. In the end the gates were closed, leaving those outside to watch the match on the giant television screen and ponder how it is that in the hierarchy of need at the 2008 US Open those who matter most - the players - turned out to be those who matter least.