ROGERS CUP

August 19, 2005

Stacey Allaster

STACEY ALLASTER: It appears that this obviously massive storm has gone through. Behind it is another smaller storm that you can see on the radar screen - nothing like the one we just had - and we're hoping that clearing will begin around 6:30. That's what the current weather forecast is telling us. You look on the radar screen right now, you can see it's nice and clear. Behind it we've got wind, so that will then allow us to right now get center court drained, which they're doing at the moment. And as soon as the rain stops and the court is ready to go, we'll continue with the Mauresmo/Petrova match, okay? Then immediately following, we'll go into the regularly scheduled other quarterfinal.

STACEY ALLASTER: Certainly if the weather clears, as soon as the weather clears and the court's ready, we'll try and get that match on as soon as possible. But at the moment, if we look at what the weather's telling us, it appears we're going to be closer to 6:30.

STACEY ALLASTER: It's amazing, already it's drained quite a bit. So from 20 minutes ago to where it's currently at, it's drained a lot. You can see there's massive fans out there. It's incredible. I've never seen anything like it (laughter). The dump truck is submerged. We shut the back of the site off down at the other end, the grandstand. It's flooded down there. We've contained that and shut all the retail.

STACEY ALLASTER: Shut all the retail. Currently closed. We'll have to assess in the next little while whether or not it's safe for the back end of the site to be reopened.

STACEY ALLASTER: Appears they might come back (laughter).

STACEY ALLASTER: Well, it appears every time I adopt a child, I use my good luck up when I bring a baby home from Siberia and I don't get the luck during the tournament. Obviously it's incredibly bad luck. Weather like this is normal in the sense that we have a big thunderstorm. This was obviously severe, severe, severe. We're now testing the Rexall Centre and we can see maybe there's some drainage issues that we're going to have to rectify. But look on the weather screen, it looks like blue skies and sunny. Myskina played today and she got through it. I felt that was good luck.

STACEY ALLASTER: I think the tour wants to try to get all matches in any way we can. We have three courts that can go under the lights, so we'll do everything possible to get all matches completed as soon as the weather cooperates. The other thing is if a fan is going to stay - this is where we'll need your help to communicate to the public - if someone wants to stay to watch Amélie and Nadia finish their match, we want to coordinate something so they can stay with us for the evening match to watch that. Every 30 minutes we'll give you a weather update.

STACEY ALLASTER: If we have this one-quarter left, then this evening's match, which is currently scheduled for 6:30 just to follow, we're one set into one-quarter. Whoever has the night session ticket is going to get an added bonus.

STACEY ALLASTER: Well, I think it's very important that through all our different communication channels, particularly on the web, it's always we're playing, and we'll stay as long as we can tonight to finish these quarterfinals. Thank you.