Madrid Open director Feliciano Lopez breaks silence on 'surviving' power outage fiasco: "We had zero information"

Major parts of Spain and Portugal faced a complete power outage on Monday, April 28. Due to this, the Mutua Madrid Open also came to hold for one whole day. The tournament director, Felician Lopez, recently shared how the management dealt with the situation while revealing that they were clueless about the power cut.

When the power went out, a couple of men’s third-round matches were going on — Grigor Dimitrov vs. Jacob Fearnley and Damir Dzumhur vs. Matteo Arnaldi. Meanwhile, Coco Gauff was in the middle of her on-court interview after beating Belinda Bencic in straight sets. Her interview had to be cut short due to the power outage.

While talking to Sky Sports, Lopez shared how the tournament dealt with the crisis. He said (via Sky Sports Tennis' X handle):

“We survived the power outage on Monday, and it was a very challenging day. But I have to say that the day after, when the power was back, everything was working perfectly in the venue, so we could go along with all the matches. But there was something very challenging, unexpected."

The tournament director shared how difficult it was to navigate the challenges, but they overcame them and are now smoothly conducting the tournament. He even mentioned his concern for fellow countrymen, as it was a nationwide tragedy.

"We didn’t know what was going to happen in the next hours after this happened. So honestly, it was a very difficult moment, not only for us, but for everyone in the country, because it was a national problem, it was everywhere in the country," he added.

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Players' reaction to the power outage at the Madrid Open

Blackout at the Mutua Madrid Open - Source: Getty

Many tennis players have shared their experience with the power outage at the Madrid Open on their social media platforms. Coco Gauff shared a picture of lit candles in the changing room. She captioned her Instagram story:

"when the power goes out @mutuamadridopen."

Marta Kostyuk also shared a picture on her Instagram handle with a candle. The picture was captioned as:

"WTA 1000 and 1000 candles! Any updates on the schedule, DTEK?"

Iga Swiatek opened up on the situation after her win against Diana Shnaider in the round of 16.

"Honestly, it's good that in Madrid, the sun is setting pretty late so as soon as it kinda got down and was dark, they put the energy back in our area. So honestly, I just chilled and used that time to not think about what I should do.. There was no signal. So no one used their phones… it was nice," she said (via Tennis.com).

Overall, players took the incident lightly and enjoyed the time off during the power cut. The Madrid Open has now reached the final stages, with two semifinals remaining on the women's circuit. The first semifinal will feature Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek on May 1, and the second will feature Aryna Sabalenka and Elina Svitolina on May 2.