Rain brought the first day of the LTA’s Lexus Birmingham Open to a stop at Edgbaston Priory Club after a week of sunshine and rising temperatures, leaving Mika Stojsavljevic trailing Emerson Jones 3-6 1-1 when play was suspended. The mid-afternoon downpour wiped out most of the remaining schedule and turned a fast-moving grass-court opener into a wait for Tuesday.
Before the weather closed in, Harriet Dart and Maia Lumsden had already given the home crowd something to cheer about, beating Alexandra Eala and Nikola Bartunkova 6-4 2-6 11-9 in a women’s doubles first-round match that was one of only a few completed on the day. It was a sharp start for British players, and it came just before the rain sent almost everyone else off court.
Stojsavljevic will return on Tuesday hoping to recover against Jones after being left a set and a break down, with the match paused at 3-6 1-1. Her position captures the way the day changed in an instant: one moment there was a full programme under clear skies, and the next there was a scramble to reshape the order of play around the weather.
The disruption did not stop with Stojsavljevic. Oliver Tarvet and Jack Pinnington Jones, who were due to open their Birmingham campaigns against Coleman Wong and Aleksandar Vukic respectively, were pushed back to Tuesday, while Felix Gill, Arthur Fery, Billy Harris and Jacob Fearnley were also set to join the revised schedule if the rain held off. That left the tournament’s first day tied to a familiar grass-court reality in the British summer: the forecast had already hinted at thundery showers, even as organisers hoped last week’s sunshine would last.
For Birmingham, the immediate question is not who looked strongest in the opener, but how much of Tuesday can be recovered if the weather relents. On a surface where scheduling can shift the shape of a tournament as much as form does, the players who were stopped on Monday now have to reset fast and come back prepared for a shortened, weather-tested second day.
