There was chaos at the Madrid Open on Monday when the tournament was disrupted by a mass power cut affecting parts of Spain and Portugal. One player got stuck in a lift, while others had to eat dinner by candlelight. Coco Gauff revealed there was no running water in the locker rooms, meaning the athletes couldn’t shower.
Jack Draper has now opened up about what he did to pass the time on the unusual day, which saw play cancelled entirely. But the British No. 1 didn’t want to give too much away – asked what book he read, he replied, “You don’t want to know.”
Draper was meant to face Matteo Berrettini in the last match on Stadium 3 on Monday. Although their clash was later in the schedule, the 23-year-old was already on-site when the electricity went out at around 12.30pm local time.
This meant that the world No. 6 was one of many players left to entertain themselves in the pitch-black locker room and restaurant, where candles were provided to give the competitors some light.
Shedding light on what he did during the power outage after he returned on Tuesday, Draper said: “It’s been difficult having to wait around so long in these tournaments.
“I’ve been wanting to compete a lot. I’ve been here for like eight days now and only played one match so it was tough having another day off.
“At the same time it was kind of quite nice to not have any socials, not have the phone on. I mean, I want to get away from all that anyway, so it was good. I actually ended up reading a book for once.”
However, Draper refused to divulge any more details. “You don’t need to know,” he jibed when asked to name the book.
The Brit didn’t do too much reading, though. In another interview with Tennis TV, Draper explained: “I ended up reading like four pages of a book – no, actually, 10 pages. Usually I don’t read at all.”
The No. 5 seed finally returned to face Berrettini on Tuesday afternoon, but it was short-lived, as the Italian was forced to retire after losing the first set 7-6(2) in just under an hour.
Berrettini picked up an injury in his second-round tie against Marcos Giron on Saturday, receiving a medical time out before he stormed back to win 7-6(3) 6-7(6) 6-1. But he couldn’t continue after dropping a set to Draper.
The world No. 35 also had an interesting experience during Monday’s blackout. He walked two hours back to his hotel with some other Italian players.
Berrettini’s countryman, Lorenzo Musetti, beat Stefanos Tsitsipas on Tuesday and opened up on their long journey.
“Yesterday, we lived a really tough day. Honestly, you understand how probably miserable you are without power and all the lights were down, a lot of problems with the traffic,” Musetti said.
“We walked back because there were no cars, no possibility to go back. Me, Matteo, Flavio. So we had a really nice walk for a bit and we walked like for two hours.”