LONDON • Gilles Simon threatened to sue, Eugenie Bouchard bopped along to Beyonce, while John Isner steadily became very bored playing mini-golf.

When it rains at Wimbledon - a regular happening in the first week - players are driven to distraction.

Volatile Frenchman Simon was in combative mood when light drizzle fell during his second-round match against Grigor Dimitrov yesterday.

He even briefly refused to play on. "I won't play when it rains. I know you have commitments to TV but if I get injured I will sue you and I will win," Simon told the umpire before the brief shower passed. He led 6-4 before losing the remaining sets 4-6, 4-6, 2-6.

Only 18 of the scheduled 62 singles matches were completed on Wednesday, leaving the first round to drag on until yesterday.

Isner started his first-round match against Marcos Baghdatis on Tuesday and completed a 7-6 (7-2), 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 win almost 48 hours later.

"The long days in the locker room the last two days were just brutal. You can only play so much putt, putt in the locker room with your friends," said the big American.

Bouchard, the 2014 runner-up, needed to play on Tuesday and Wednesday to defeat Magdalena Rybarikova in the first round.

She spent most of Wednesday in the locker room, unsure over whether or not she would get on court.

"I was on the same couch for about six hours straight," she said. In the locker room, a lot of us were on like - we each had our own couch. We were stationed there for a while. We were playing Beyonce, gossiping, the whole thing."

Switzerland's Timea Bacsinszky, who was one of the players to start her first-round match yesterday, said the key to dealing with the rain was just to get used to it.

"I can get angry about it and lose energy by getting angry, or I can just accept that's like that," said the women's 11th seed after her 6-4, 6-2 win over Thailand's Luksika Kumkhum.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE