Alexander Zverev defeated Jiří Lehečka 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, 7-6(8-6) on Tuesday morning to reach his first Wimbledon quarterfinal, completing a match halted the previous night when the 11 p.m. curfew struck with the score at 6-4, 7-5, 3-3 in the third set. [1] He will face sixth-seeded American Taylor Fritz on Wednesday.

When this paper established that the curfew is a local council planning condition on the All England Club's operating licence — not a Wimbledon tradition — it noted that no application to amend or remove it has been lodged with the Royal Borough of Merton. That remains true. The annual public complaint has not become an annual formal challenge. [1]

Zverev won the fourth-set tiebreak 8-6 on his third match point. Lehečka, who had won three consecutive games to take the third set, held match point himself at 6-5 in the fourth before Zverev converted. The curfew interruption did not, in the event, benefit or damage either player demonstrably. It merely made a four-set match into a two-day match.

The institutional question is unchanged: the rule is stable not because of prestige but because no party has converted the annual complaint into a formal planning application.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London