Heavy rain prompted major delays at the XL Bermuda Open for the second straight day yesterday, though tournament officials managed to get a total of four singles matches completed in between the downpours which have turned the early part of this year’s tournament into a horribly damp squib.

Play started on time yesterday morning at 11.00., though it wasn’t more than 40 minutes before what would be the first of a lengthy succession of dark clouds approached the Coral Beach Club from the north west to dump their heavy loads onto the green clay courts.

It wasn’t until four in the afternoon that play was able to re-start, although to make room in the schedule, number one seed Sam Querrey’s first-round match against Chilean qualifier Jorge Aguilar had to be postponed until today, when organisers hope they will be able to finish all of the remaining first round matches — weather permitting.

Even still, the evening session was barely an hour old when the heavens opened once again — forcing players and spectators to scurry for cover as tournament officials decided enough was enough and immediately brought an end to what had been a depressing and soggy day.

This is not the first time that the XL has been severely affected by bad weather, though long-time tournament director Alec Anderson said last night that he couldn’t remember any previous events in which play had been so badly disrupted on consecutive days.

Despite his obvious frustration, however, Anderson said that he and his staff would do everything they could in the circumstances to get the matches played in a timely fashion.

“We’re not in too bad a shape at the moment to be honest,” he said.

“Obviously the last two days have been frustrating for all of us, but there’s nothing we can do about the weather and so it’s just a matter of being patient and getting the matches played when we can.

“We have to be a little bit flexible with the schedule when the weather is like this because it’s not fair on the players scheduled to go on later in the day to have to sit around for hours and hours — which is why we delayed Querrey’s match for 24 hours.

“We’re a little limited in the sense that we only have one court with lights, because ideally if there is a big rain delay during the day we’d like to get as many matches done after it’s gone dark.

“But as it stands we should have all of the first round matches done by the end of tomorrow (today), though clearly you just don’t know if that’s going to be possible.”

Meanwhile, even when play did re-start yesterday afternoon, the weather remained foul — with the blustery wind, particularly on the more exposed upper courts, causing many players problems with their control and ball tosses when serving.

Former world number 47 Davide Sanguinetti was one of the unfortunate ones to be in action on those particular courts, but despite the difficult conditions he still took a little over an hour and a half to dispatch the unseeded Romanian Horia Tacau in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4.

The 34-year-old Italian — who can count Roger Federer and Andy Roddick among many past scalps in a career spanning almost 15 years — was a little ponderous getting out of the blocks and slipped to 4-1 down in the first set.

But having looked a little tentative in the uncomfortable conditions for the first 20 minutes, Sanguinetti suddenly found his range on his groundstrokes and reeled off five straight games to take the opener.

Tacau did his best to suppress the silver-haired Italian’s charge in the second, but Sanguinetti just put too much pressure on the Romanian’s serve for him to have any real chance of fighting his way back into the match.

Elsewhere, Canadian fifth seed Frank Dancevic overcame America’s Alex Zuznetsov 7-6, 5-7, 6-2 while qualifier Alex Satschko ousted wildcard entrant Jesse Witten 3-6, 6-1, 6-4.

Number two seed Alexander Peya of Austria had a straightforward win over Israel’s Dudi Sela while in the final match on Centre Court last night which was halted by the rain, qualifier Nikita Kryvonos was well on his way to upsetting former world number 63 Kevin Kim of the US.

Kryvonos was 6-1, 3-1 up before the rain started, and will return this morning confident of a straight-sets victory.

Meanwhile, organisers revealed last night that Bermuda number one Andy Bray will play his first round doubles match this evening.