BEN SHELTON won at Wimbledon in just 70 SECONDS.
The American No10 seed beat Australian Rinky Hijikata 6-2 7-5 6-4 in the second round.
However, the match descended into chaos last night when play was suspended due to bad light at 9.29pm, moments after Shelton squandered three match points.
It is understood there was only five minutes left before it was too dark for the Hawk-Eye line calling cameras to operate properly.
That was despite Shelton leading 5-4 in the third and about to serve for the match, having not dropped his serve in the entire match.
Shelton furiously protested as he was desperate to get over the finish line so he could have today as a rest day.
But as he was held back from arguing with the chair umpire by a Wimbledon official in the darkness.
So he made a rapid statement when he returned to No2 Court on Friday lunchtime.
Shelton won four straight points to complete the win in bizarre scenes that lasted just over a minute.
Incredibly, Hijikata did not even get a shot in play – and only touched the ball once.
Shelton produced a 140mph ace, a 107mph second serve that Hijikata framed out, another 140mph ace and then finished off the job with a 118mph ace.
Hilariously, it meant the warm-up and his on-court interview both lasted longer than the action on Friday.
And Shelton could not help but laugh as he addressed the Wimbledon crowd, which had to be slightly delayed due to a technical glitch with the microphones.
He said: “For me, very different playing over two days and coming out for whatever that was… 55 seconds today.
“I was hoping to maybe hit a few groundstrokes today. Might have to go to the practice courts.
“I missed one first serve so there’s something to be upset about and improve in the next match. I couldn’t be happier to hit three aces took the pressure off.
“I’m sorry you guys didn’t get to see much tennis. No rallies.
“I’m not sure how many of you guys were in the crowd last night but thanks everyone for staying late and coming back.”
Shelton later said in his press conference: “To stop when you’re serving for the match isn’t ideal. I thought we could have stopped earlier.
“If they knew they were going to stop it, it seemed like there were better times to stop it before it got to that point.
“The supervisor said it was a five-minute warning until the Hawk-Eye was going down, including the changeover, so there wouldn’t be enough time to complete the game.
“I was telling him, ‘I only need 60 seconds. Why would we not play until it goes down? Let’s just keep playing.’
“That’s kind of what my goal was when I went out there today.”
Tournament director Jamie Baker admitted it was not an ideal situation.
He said: “I’d have been pretty unhappy too.
“We have been playing really late this week because the weather has been great.
“The skies have been clear, and last night, we pushed it as far as we possibly could.
“If one of the players had said to us that they were uncomfortable, kind of 20, 25, minutes before, we would have stopped them.
“Ultimately, we did as much as we possibly could.
“For the pinnacle tennis tournament in the world, we pushed as far as we were comfortable with. It was almost completely dark. We can’t have players playing (in the dark).”
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