Almost 16 hours after poor light forced a temporary halt to his fourth-round match with Jiri Vesely, No.10 seed Tomas Berdych pulled away in the final set on Tuesday to book a place in the Wimbledon quarter-finals for the fourth time in his career.
A last-eight clash with Lucas Pouille on Wednesday is the Czech’s reward for outlasting Vesely, who had saved five match points late on Monday night before levelling the match at two sets apiece as the light faded.
Emotions had been running high between the countrymen on No.3 Court on Monday evening, with the normally imperturbable Vesely working to bend the crowd to his cause.
Visibly rattled at times as he failed to close out the win, Berdych implored the umpire several times to halt the match before later asking for it to be moved under the lights on Centre Court.
Play went on without the assistance of Hawk-Eye - made redundant by the advancing gloom - before time was finally called at two sets all as the clock moved well past 9pm.
When the players re-emerged on Tuesday lunchtime, it was relatively plain sailing for Berdych. Three unforced errors from Vesely in the opening game of the deciding set allowed Berdych to clinch a break.
NoSuchKeyAlthough Vesely broke back in the sixth game to tie things up at 3-3, Berdych won the final three games of the match to clinch a marathon 4-6, 6-3, 7-6(8), 6-7(9), 6-3 victory.
“It wasn’t really a position I wanted to be in, especially last night,” Berdych said.
“The important thing was that I was able to erase it from my mind very quickly, get a good night's sleep, and come back strong again to finish the last set. It was my experience more than anything that got me through it.”
Standing between Berdych and a second Wimbledon final (he was defeated by Rafael Nadal in 2010) are Pouille, and, potentially, the highest-ranked player left in the draw, Andy Murray.
Berdych will be a favourite to defeat Pouille, the 32nd seed here, but he admits the 22-year-old Frenchman is something of an unknown quantity as he tries to fine-tune his preparations for their quarter-final. Before this year’s tournament Pouille had only played one match at Wimbledon – a first-round defeat in 2015.
“There are plenty of ways to look at his game and that’s what I will be doing with my team ahead of the match,” Berdych said.
“I practiced with him on one day before this tournament started but that’s the only time we have ever spent on court together.”
