NEWPORT — At long last, the sun was shining brightly in Newport on Wednesday, at least for a good part of the afternoon anyway. But thanks to the previous day's deluge of rain, very little tennis was played at the Campbell's Hall of Fame Tennis Championships. Just four matches and part of another, to be exact.

With portions of the grass courts at the International Tennis Hall of Fame still saturated after the storm that came through on Tuesday night, play was first delayed and then ultimately cancelled on both the Stadium court and Court 2.

"It wasn't that long ago that we've had to deal with rain," said Mark Stenning, CEO of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, as well as the tournament director. "The frustrating part of it for me is to have an unplayable court on a day where it's 72 degrees and a nice beautiful breeze and we've got 2,500 tickets sold for today. So I cannot remember a time like this where the courts have been so saturated, not only as a result of the 1.6 inches of rain we got over the last 24 hours, but the last six weeks. The court looks great, but when you walk out there, it's squishy."

Although the majority of the courts themselves were fairly dry, areas immediately behind the baseline on the Stadium Court and Court 2 — areas that were not covered by tarps during the rain — were still wet. Some areas in the corners also were wet. The grounds crew worked throughout the day attempting to dry the grass courts with walk-behind blowers, but to no avail.

"If a player went wide, they'd be like on ice," Stenning said. "Even though these guys wear grass-court shoes, it would still be very, very slick and I don't want to risk a guy's career, or certainly his summer, to throw him on a court that's unplayable."

Is there any way to better handle the situation in the future, Stenning was asked.

"As I get older, and I just had my 54th birthday, I realize that certain things are outside of your control, and this was one of those things," he said. "This is outside of anybody's control."

"We could put in a roof like Wimbledon," he added. "But $30 million isn't available."

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In one of the few matches completed Wednesday, Philipp Petzschner of Germany defeated Argentina's Horacio Zeballos, 6-4, 6-7 (4), 6-2.

Coming off of surgery to repair torn ligaments in his left wrist in January, American Alex Bogomolov secured his first ATP Tour match win since March of 2006 when he defeated Arnaud Clement of France, 1-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Nicolas Mahut, also of France, defeated American Amer Delic, 6-4, 6-4.

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Fabrice Santoro attempted to get his title defense underway, but the two-time defending champion's match with Flavio Cipolla was suspended at 3-all in the first set when clouds quickly rolled in at around 6 p.m.

The grounds crew was rushing frantically to cover the courts with large blue tarps when a light drizzle turned into a downpour and yet another thunderstorm passed through.

With all of the doubles matches and six singles matches postponed, Thursday's slate will include a total of 20 matches, beginning with the suspended matches between Kevin Kim and Sebastien Grosjean and Ricardo Mello and Samuel Groth.

If all goes as planned, four courts will be used — one in the Stadium and three on the lawn.

Patrons holding tickets for Wednesday may use them on Thursday for a grounds-pass admission. Ticket information is available on-line at http://www.tennisfame.com or by calling 866-914-FAME (3263).

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Wearing a hat and sash adorned with tennis balls, 46-year-old John Zemer was the obvious choice for Wednesday's Kia Motors Fan of the Day.

Once a commodities stock broker in Chicago and now an employee of U.S. Airways living in Las Vegas, Zemer says he has flown to 870 places over the last 10 years and has been around the world twice.

This year, he decided his goal would be to visit the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments — the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. Then Zemer read a story written by tennis historian Bud Collins entitled "10 great places to indulge your love for tennis," and decided to add the six other tournaments to his list. The Campbell's Hall of Fame Championships is his eighth stop.

"It's very nice," Zemer said of the tournament, as he stood courtside holding a bag full of souvenirs he had purchased. "The prices are reasonable compared to, like, Europe, because everything's expensive there. I went to the (La Forge) restaurant and had lunch outside on the patio. I like it because it's real small and real close for walking and stuff like that. Everybody's been nice and friendly. . . . . I just wish there was tennis."

cthorn@projo.com