LONDON — Four points. Three aces. About a minute. That's all it took for Ben Shelton to wrap up a 6-2, 7-5, 6-4 victory over Rinky Hijikata on Friday in a second-round Wimbledon match suspended the night before because of darkness at 5-4 in the third set.
''I wasn't really going for four aces,'' the 10th-seeded Shelton said.
Sure, Ben.
Either way, the two-time Grand Slam semifinalist was in a much better mood than he was on Thursday night around 9:30 p.m., when he didn't agree with the decision to stop right as he was about to try to serve out the victory at No. 2 Court. There are no artificial lights there, plus Shelton said he was told that the electronic line-calling system was about to stop working.
He looked rather animated, and someone came between Shelton and the chair umpire, although the player said Friday that wasn't really necessary.
''I guess when he saw a guy my size walking quickly towards the umpire, maybe he thought I was ready to throw hands or something. I definitely wasn't,'' Shelton said. ''I got over it pretty quickly. ... It probably looked more tense than it was."
The American, who reached the final four at the 2023 U.S. Open and this year's Australian Open, and Hijikata, an Australian ranked 87th, returned to the same stadium a little less than 16 hours later after the suspension for what turned out to be just one game.
''A little bit bizarre,'' Hijikata said.
