NEW YORK -- Andy Roddick walked down the hallway from the locker room at Arthur Ashe Stadium, then made a left just before the door leading to the court.
Where was he headed? To the tournament referee's office, site of the biggest buzz of activity Tuesday afternoon at the U.S. Open. Rain postponed matches for a second straight day, and officials said the tournament might not finish on time.
No. 1-ranked Kim Clijsters, Amelie Mauresmo and Lleyton Hewitt were among the parade of players tracing the same route as Roddick, trying to get information about when the clouds might clear and when matches might be played.
"I try to stay pretty calm," said two-time major champion Mary Pierce, whose fourth-round match against No. 7 Anastasia Myskina was halted in the first set Monday night. "Whatever happens, happens. The conditions are difficult, and I was waiting a long time. You're warming up and cooling down, warming up and cooling down."
Clijsters and No. 5 Mauresmo were sent home Tuesday at 5 p.m., when their quarterfinal was postponed. Three other singles matches were pushed back until Wednesday: No. 3 Lindsay Davenport vs. No. 24 Paola Suarez, No. 2 Roger Federer vs. No. 13 David Nalbandian, and No. 7 Carlos Moya vs. No. 22 Younes El Aynaoui. Eighty-seven of the 95 matches on Tuesday's schedule -- including all doubles, junior and senior draw matches -- were moved.
"The forecast right now is not all that optimistic," said Arlen Kantarian, U.S. Tennis Association CEO of pro tennis. He was talking about the weather, but he might as well have been referring to the logjam of delayed matches.
Shortly before 6 p.m., top-ranked Andre Agassi and unseeded American Taylor Dent went out on court at Arthur Ashe Stadium to warm up and begin their fourth-round match. They played for 34 minutes, long enough for Agassi to go up a break 5-4 in the first set, before rain returned and they walked off. A little more than hour later, the match resumed, with Dent breaking right back to 5-5 and then winning the first set 7-6 (5) while a misty rain fell.
During the changeover after the set, tournament referee Brian Earley came out to check the court, saying to Agassi and Dent: "If you guys both want to stay out here, we're willing."
But eventually play was stopped again.
Then, at about 8:40 p.m., Agassi and Dent were playing the second set. It took nearly another hour, though, for matches to start on other courts, including Todd Martin against French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero, and No. 5 Guillermo Coria against Jonas Bjorkman.
Unlike at the Australian Open, there are no covered courts at the National Tennis Center for play or practice. Kantarian said a company that does stadium planning was recently hired to look into whether it would make sense to put a roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium.
And unlike at Wimbledon, no tarps or tents are put on courts when it rains.
"We've been talking about covers since the '80s," Martina Navratilova said. "Yesterday they spent more time drying the courts than it rained. When are they going to learn? We have no say on it. Yesterday, it was two hours of play, six hours of drying. Fifteen minutes is enough after a drizzle."
So organizers were contemplating all sorts of contingency plans to finish the event by Sunday. But with a serious backlog, there is a chance the men's final could be played on a Monday for the first time since 1987.
"It's obviously driving the players crazy. Everybody wants to see some tennis," John McEnroe said on TV. "The sport is losing out right now. This is the United States Open, and we're sitting here twiddling our thumbs."
Earley said one option would be to have players who have to finish a suspended match also go out later and play another full match on the same day. Asked whether men could be asked to play two full best-of-five set matches in one day, Earley said: "I never say 'Never.' Hard for me to imagine that, but then again, I've never been in this situation."
Martin, the ATP Player Council president, said players wouldn't be willing to do that.
Martin also dismissed the idea of reducing men's matches to best-of-three sets.
"I don't remember seeing a 72-hole Grand Slam golf tournament condensed," he said. "To my knowledge, this facility is not needed for any other purpose next week. If we need to go to Monday or Tuesday, in my opinion, that's what we need to do."
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