Photo : Sarah-Jade Champagne
Main draw play at the ATP Challenger National Bank Championship got off to a sputtering start on Tuesday as rain wreaked havoc with the schedule in Granby on Tuesday, initially delaying the start of the day by four and a half hours.
In the end, only three matches were completed.
Play got underway at 2:30 pm, with matches having originally been scheduled to start at 10 am.
Three matches were in that starting group, with Juncheng Shang, Nicolas Mejia, and Henry Patten all claiming the first sets of their matches before having to stop due to more rain. Shang and Meija were both up a break in the second set on Canadian opponents, Marko Stakusic and Juan Carlos Aguilar, at the time of the stoppage.
Both the sixth-seeded Shang and 10th-seed Mejia hung on when play resumed just after 7 pm, finishing off the two Canadians, each in straight sets. Patten also managed to close out Kyle Seelig in two.
Two more matches got underway in the evening before the rain returned around 9 pm, putting an end to the day’s play in Granby.
At the time of the final stoppage, Maxime Janvier had won the first set in a tiebreak and was up 2-1 in the second on serve over Sekou Bangoura, while the all-American clash between Colin Markes and Ezekiel Clark was locked in a first-set tiebreak.
Canadian Liam Draxl was unable to even start his match with third seed Jordan Thompson. They were scheduled to close the day on Centre Court. Also postponed entirely was the match between second seed Jiri Vesely and American Aidan Mayo.
