Wimbledon rain decision threatens Stan Wawrinka's title hopes

Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland has had his ambition to win Wimbledon severely impaired by a scheduling decision. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP

Wimbledon was on Saturday night facing criticism over a scheduling decision which may have ruined the chances of Stanislas Wawrinka, the Australian Open champion, of winning the title. After rain interrupted play for the first five hours, officials cancelled the third-round matches between Wawrinka and Denis Istomin and Feliciano López and John Isner at 5.12pm, leaving them the unlikely task of winning five best-of-five-sets matches in seven days to win the title.

After the rain cleared, all but one of the other outstanding third-round matches were able to completed, leaving Wawrinka the highest-profile player to be affected and leaving his coach, Magnus Norman, furious.

'Rain today. Got cancelled. No play Sunday because [of] tradition. Now the bracket with Stan has to play three days best of five if want to go through,' he said on Twitter.

Tournament organisers moved a number of matches on to outside courts but two doubles matches were played on courts that could have been used for Wawrinka against Istomin and Isner against López. Having cancelled the two matches, however, they could not bring them back and since Wimbledon is the only one of the four grand slam events that does not play on the middle Sunday, the four players will have to return .

Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer were all unaffected and will play their fourth-round matches on Monday, as scheduled, with the winners then playing again on Wednesday. But Wawrinka's chances of a first Wimbledon crown look dead in the water, a problem Federer acknowledged.

'I guess Stan's section and Isner's section, they have to play three straight days now,' said Federer, who escaped a delay of his own when his next opponent, Tommy Robredo, finished off his third-round match well after 9pm. 'There could be 15 sets right there, long sets. You don't know what's going to happen. It's a bit of the unknown. I mean, these guys are all fit enough to handle it, but it can have an impact, no doubt.

'I don't consider myself lucky or anything like that,' he added. 'But it was definitely good to play today, to finish today, and to stay in a normal sort of schedule now. You can't choose always. It is what it is and you have to adapt to it.'