What do tennis players do at Wimbledon when rain stops play?

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“Denis (Shapovalov) was doing some animal-trivia questions with his team and I jumped in on that. I learned that a turtle can breathe through its butt.”

This slightly surreal revelation comes from 2016 Wimbledon runner-up Milos Raonic as he reflects on how he passed the time during one of the many lengthy rain delays during the first few days of this year’s Wimbledon.

Rain, as big a Wimbledon preoccupation as strawberries and cream, has been one of the big talking points so far of this year’s Championships.

There was a delay on Monday, while Tuesday was pretty much a complete washout — aside from Centre Court and Court 1, which have roofs — with the most matches cancelled (69) on a single day since 2004. Wednesday was better, but intermittent showers meant the first few hours of play were delayed and then stop-start.

It’s extremely frustrating for the fans and the tournament when this happens (costing Wimbledon about £250,000/$317,200 in refunds on Tuesday), but what about the players?

How do they pass hour after hour when they don’t know if they’re coming or going?

Well, aside from turtle trivia and being on their phone sending messages and watching videos, here’s how they do it — including planning for a Shania Twain concert, trips to the on-site hair salon, and putting together Lego models and jigsaw puzzles (not Just Stop Oil ones) to keep the mind active.

Passing time during a rain delay for a tennis player is broadly like what one does on a summer holiday when bad weather keeps you indoors.

The main activities for players are sleeping, eating and trying not to get too wound up about the fact this is a situation that deep down everyone is obviously hating.

It’s a very difficult balance because players don’t know when the rain is going to stop and they are going to be called to court, meaning many have spent the past couple of days warming up and trying to get “in the zone” only to then quickly have to warm down and exit that “zone”. Some players like to practise indoors or go to the gym, both of which are options at Wimbledon, but again the uncertainty makes it difficult to know how much they should be doing.

There are a number of technical, athletic challenges for the players to negotiate, but starting with staving off boredom, players have various different techniques.

“I play cards and talk a lot,” says the American former Australian Open finalist Danielle Collins, who won her first round against Julia Grabher on Wednesday after starting the match two days earlier. “I didn’t play games on Tuesday but I like to play Checkers. And I’m playing doubles with (2019 Wimbledon quarter-finalist) Alison Riske-Amritraj and we’re going to the Shania Twain concert in New Orleans, so we were talking about logistics for that.

“I saw Madison Brengle (the one-time world No 35 who is also into the Wimbledon second round) and I was telling her about my new cooking app — I’ve got the new New York Times cooking app. It’s so worth it; everything’s cook-tested. So yeah, luckily I got to catch up with some friends who I hadn’t seen for a while. I kept myself entertained.”

Others, like the world No 1 Iga Swiatek, like to make Lego models and do jigsaw puzzles to keep their minds active (though rain delays at Wimbledon are a rarity for Swiatek now given she tends to be on the show courts), while some use the on-site hair and beauty salon down by the players’ lawn. “Though the coaches use it more,” says the American 2017 US Open champion Sloane Stephens. Like Collins, her first-round match finished on Wednesday after being scheduled for Monday.

Stephens herself was one of those who took a nap in the players’ lounge — sleeping on a sofa for an hour while her mum and husband (the former USMNT and Sunderland striker Jozy Altidore) did likewise. At some tournaments, players sleep on towels and space at Wimbledon in the players’ areas has been scarce this week with so many having large entourages nowadays. This has been a big change in the past few years and means players talk less to one another and stick more with their teams.

Sloane Stephens (Photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

That said, America’s world No 10 Frances Tiafoe was determined to keep the mood light and spent most of the rain delays messing about with the other players.

“I was telling jokes to whoever was around. Novak (Djokovic) was there — I said to him I wish I had 23 grand slams so I could play under a roof and I knew I was playing for sure,” a smiling Tiafoe tells The Athletic.

Grigor Dimitrov, the world No 24 and a semi-finalist here in 2014, says: “I’ll listen to music, read a book, keep on being active, do a little cycling.”

Back in the day, former world No 1 Ana Ivanovic liked to play Sudoku during rain delays, while Roger Federer’s preference was for the Swiss card game Jass. “Roger used to talk, have lunch, play cards,” says his former coach Paul Annacone. “We’d go and play cards upstairs. Jass, we used to play with Severin (Luthi, another of Federer’s coaches) as well, and he claims he would always win.

“Nowadays you see players playing cards, backgammon and on their phone playing video games. With Taylor (Fritz, America’s world No 9 who is coached by Annacone), you have to pull his head out of his video games once in a while so he doesn’t get too immersed before he plays a match.”

Taylor Fritz (Photo: Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)

Away from keeping themselves occupied, players have to ensure they are physically and mentally ready should the rain stop and they are called to court. Tennis is a strange sport because even on non-rain days there can be a huge range of possible start times. If you’re not the first match on court, then you’re at the mercy of other matches, which can seem like they’re about to end and then drag on for another few hours. Rain delays exacerbate these issues.

From a nutritional perspective, Stephens explains that to keep fuelled she and other players had to keep on eating plain pasta at various different points on Tuesday.

If it’s a short delay, players will stay with their main coaches. Daniil Medvedev, for instance, spent the short delay during his match with Arthur Fery on Wednesday throwing a medicine ball around. If it’s only a short stop, someone like a strength and conditioning coach will have their players go through dynamic exercises, keeping them on their toes with tasks like asking them to juggle or catch balls being thrown at them to test their reflexes.

During short delays like these, coaches are trying to keep players at a level of physical and mental engagement pretty much as if they were still playing. They’ll be asked not to do anything like scrolling on their phone that could relax them and distract them from the task at hand.

Some players use these breaks to talk tactics with their coaches, which can be pivotal in turning matches around. Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia, a semi-finalist at the French Open last month, was down 1-4 and then 2-5 in the first set against Yulia Putintseva when the rain fell on two occasions on Wednesday.

“The rain helped me,” she said after winning in three sets. “I had two stops to reflect and I talked a lot to Rafa (Paciaroni, her coach). I improved after that. It was important more mentally than physically.”

The key to how to manage a rain delay, whether long or short, is maintaining the right energy. And coaches play a crucial role here in keeping their players grounded and not too wound up or relaxed. “I say to them that you have to be able to let go of the things you can’t control,” says Annacone, who also used to coach the legendary Pete Sampras. “But it’s really hard to do that in practice.”

Athletes are, by their nature, control freaks, so for them to accept they are powerless is difficult. Coaches talk a lot to their players about not wasting energy, both physical and emotional.

Raonic, when not learning about turtles’ bottoms, says his nerves at playing again after so long out with injury contributed to him being too on edge during Tuesday’s washout. “I warmed up a bunch of times and didn’t have a sense of how long I would need to warm up for,” he said after his heavily delayed first-round win against Dennis Novak on Wednesday. “One thing I was really worried about was that after all these setbacks I would come out flat. So I was just moving the whole time — it probably wasn’t the most energy-efficient thing but I thought I’d rather go that way than the other way, as things can get away from you pretty quickly on grass.”

The Ukrainian world No 28 Marta Kostyuk had a similar problem, waking up on Tuesday raring to go, only to then spend the day killing time. “I woke up really ready for the match, really pumped. So I felt like I burnt out a little bit yesterday. It wasn’t easy to start today.” Kostyuk eventually found the energy from the day before and beat the No 8 seed Maria Sakkari in three sets.

Tiafoe, a naturally relaxed character, found a way to stay loose during the ongoing interruptions to his first-round match against Wu Yibing. “It’s one of those things — it’s so stressful already when you get out there. I’m cracking jokes with the other players. Just having a laugh. Because you don’t know how long it’s going to be. I’m not one of those guys who can just stay in the zone for a long time. So just relax and then when you get out there do what you gotta do.”

Medvedev agrees and says: “I try not to overthink too much. I just spend time on my phone or even just sleep or talk to someone. But not getting into some deep discussions or something like this.”

Some players, like the 32-year-old Dimitrov, claim to even quite like the rain as they feel their experience gives them an edge in these situations. “I feel very calm in situations like this and, in a way, though it’s funny to say it: I like it.”

Grigor Dimitrov (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

At Wimbledon, delays are at least made more manageable by the fact most players stay in nearby houses and so can pop home and be more comfortable there, even if they have to then come back later in the day. On a day like Tuesday, when the rain came falling, players were gradually told they could go home once it became clear their matches weren’t going to happen.

Being put out of your misery and being told your match is definitely off can be a relief after so much waiting around. “You always wait until they officially cancel your match because you never know,” says Medvedev. “If you decide to go home by yourself, then suddenly they could move your match to Centre or something. And you’re like, ‘Ah, I shouldn’t have done that’.”

Thankfully, no one has made that mistake yet this tournament, but with more rain forecast, the players are going to have to come up with even more ways to manage a perennial Wimbledon challenge.

(Top photo: Haddad Maia leaving the court on Wednesday during one of the rain delays. Photo: Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images)

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