Tennis: Raonic match delayed by darkness

LONDON— Milos Raonic will have to wait another day to finish his third-round match at Wimbledon.

The Canadian split the first two sets with Australian qualifier Dennis Novak and was up 6-5 in the third set before darkness halted play on Friday night. The match is scheduled to conclude on Saturday.

Raonic, the No. 13 seed from Thornhill, Ont., won the first set 7-6 (5) before Novak bounced back with a 6-4 victory in the second set.

The match was moved to a smaller court because previously scheduled matches on Court 1 ran long.

The win in the opening set was Raonic’s fourth consecutive tiebreak win at the tournament. He won 7-6 (4), 7-6 (4), 7-6 (4) in the second round against Australia’s John Millman.

The winner of the RaonicNovak match will face American Mackenzie McDonald.

McDonald, the world’s 103rdranked player is off to the fourth round after defeating Argenti- na’s Guido Pella 6-4. 6-4, 7-6 (6). DOUBLE THE WORK: Cameron Norrie’s biggest disappointment was falling short of a Wimbledon record.

Norrie and fellow Englishman Jay Clarke came up short in a three-day, 87-game, five-hour, two-minute first-round doubles marathon against Hans Podlipnik-Castillo of Chile and his Argentine partner Marcelo Arevalo.

The 6-4, 6-7 (5), 5-7, 6-4, 22-20 scoreline left the match tied for the fifth-most games in men’s doubles at Wimbledon, 15 short of the 102 played when Marcelo Melo and Andre Sa defeated Kevin Ullyett and Paul Hanley 28-26 in the fifth set of their second-round encounter in 2007.

Norrie, ranked 75 in singles, doesn’t take doubles “too seriously,” but was down after being told how close they had come to topping the long-match list.

“It’s tough we just missed the record,” Norrie said.