Rain forces 3rd straight Monday final at US Open

A Monday men’s final is becoming a US Open tradition.

The championship match between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic was postponed a day because of persistent rain Sunday, the third consecutive year that the season’s last major tournament won’t finish on schedule.

The No. 1-seeded Nadal, bidding to complete a career Grand Slam, and No. 3 Djokovic were supposed to begin playing at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, but showers began more than 1 1/2 hours earlier and hadn’t stopped by 6:15 p.m., when tournament officials decided to call it a night.

The final was rescheduled for 4 p.m. Monday, when the forecast calls for a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms.

Before 2008, the US Open men’s final hadn’t been pushed to Monday since 1987. But Roger Federer beat Andy Murray on a Monday two years ago, then lost to Juan Martin del Potro on a Monday last year. This marks the first three-year string of delayed finishes at the tournament since the men’s and women’s singles competitions were combined and played at the same site in 1935.

“It was a very uncertain forecast, and had been shifting over the course of the day. We are in a band of showers that potentially could stretch until 1 (a.m.),” US Tennis Association spokesman Chris Widmaier said. “There may be breaks in there, but it was such an uncertain forecast that we felt the right thing to do for the players—and certainly for the fans—was to postpone the remaining matches until tomorrow.”

Nadal and Djokovic were told a little before 6:30 p.m. that they wouldn’t be playing Sunday, Widmaier said.