WHAT A life this sports journalism is. Sitting on centre court at Wimbledon watching Cliff Richard go through one sixties hit after another with a backing group that included Martina Navratilova, Conchita Martinez and Gigi Fernandez. Believe me, nobody prepared me for this tennis gig being anything like this.
Granny's favourite pop star volunteered his services to fill in some time during one of several lengthy breaks in play on what should have been the only men's quarter finals day in these championships. Now Pete Sampras, Goran Ivanisevic and their respective opponents will all have to come back this morning to try to finish what they started at lunchtime yesterday. The way things were going for the favourites, though, they won't have been complaining too much.
Of the two, Sampras actually made a very good start to his match with Richard Krajicek, out serving his opponent and making the Dutchman work very hard indeed to avoid an early slip up. In the first four games the defending champion dropped just one point on serve while the 24 year old from Rotterdam was getting less than half of his first attempts in and struggling to stay on top thereafter.
He had ample opportunity to reflect on what was going wrong for him at that point, however, when the elements intervened and halted the proceedings for more than an hour.
By the time the pair returned the balance of things had clearly shifted and it was now the man from Rotterdam who strode confidently about the baseline and picked up points at will from the net while the American had clearly become unsettled.
Struggling in several aspects of his game, but particularly on his backhand, which haemorrhaged points, the world number one never looked like making a breakthrough again in the opening set.
Both men, in fact, seemed to be beading for a tie break until, serving at 5-6 down, Sampras first made an error to put his opponent ahead and was then sent reeling by first a brilliant fore hand cross court winner, then a backhand pass down the line and finally a whipped back return of serve by Krajicek that gave him the set.
Uncharacteristically, to put it in movie parlance, Pistol Pete was beginning to look like somebody who had been unfortunate enough to bring a knife to a gunfight.
Things weren't to get much better for the three times champion from Washington in the second set in which, once again, it was still his opponent who was generally finding it less troublesome to come through on service. At five games apiece Sampras did carve out a brief opportunity for himself and certainly seemed to feel hard done by when a backhand return of a weak second serve being called out cost him the game. But a couple of minutes later matters were evened up when he was the beneficiary of a similarly close call at set point.
The tie break didn't go well for the champion and the set slipped away to three with Krajicek's seventh point coming off a return that an increasingly dejected looking Sampras barely moved for. After they had shared the next two games the rain returned. The American, who has won his last 25 matches on these courts, was given the evening to plot a route back from the precipice.
He might do worse than ask some directions from Ivanisevic who, caving dropped the first two sets with a forlorn display against Jason Stoltenberg, came back strongly at the end of the third to keep himself in the hunt for the title. Hiss opponent, the world number 46 who has thus far waltzed through the draw playing nobody of note and looking very happy about it, even had a opportunity to wrap up what would have been a wonderful victory at the end of the third set.
For a couple of hours yesterday well seven hours, actually, with all of the breaks the Australian, who has experienced heavy defeat at the hands of Ivanisevic in the past, appeared to have the beating of the world number seven.
The Croat failed to settle early on, conceding a service break in the opening game and never coming closer than 0-30 to getting back on level terms in the opening set. In the second the Australian, who briefly held a top 20 ranking two years ago, kept the pressure up on his more highly rated opponent. Despite the power of Ivanisevic's serves, Stoltenberg succeeded in keeping his returns very close to the net and with the fourth seed's attacking volleys far less reliable than usual there was little sign of give from either player.
Eventually it was the man making his first appearance in a Grand Slam quarter final who moved to within a set of the last four when he took a tie break 7-3. Shortly after returning from another enforced spell under cover at 5-4, though, he found himself within a point.
At 30-40, though, the Croat fired a brave second serve wide to his opponent's backhand to keep his challenge alive before finally taking the game with a successful venture to the net and starting, at last, to resemble a man who believed that this was only a warm up for the real matches to come.
The twice beaten finalist was this time the 7-3 winner in the tie break, at which point play was halted due to poor light, but by the time the two men wandered towards the dressing rooms it was Ivanisevic who looked the more likely to enjoy his rest.
Yesterday's disruption means an early start for British hero Tim Henman, meanwhile, with the 21 year old now scheduled to get a hectic day on centre Court underway at 11 o'clock this morning. A couple of weeks ago the price of a pint would surely have bought his.
