A disheartening day five of Wimbledon for Great Britain saw all of Andy Murray, Cameron Norrie and Liam Broady suffer defeats, leaving the host nation with no players left in the men's singles.
Murray and Greek fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas returned to Centre Court to finish what they had started on Thursday, where the two-time champion established a 2-1 lead before the match was suspended ahead of the 11pm curfew.
As play resumed on a vibrant Centre Court on Friday - 10 years to the day from Murray's win over Novak Djokovic in the 2013 final - there was initially very little to separate the two fierce competitors once again, but Tsitsipas's venomous forehand came to the fore as he came up trumps 7-6[3] 6-7[2] 4-6 7-6[3] 6-4.
Neither player fashioned a single break point in the fourth set, but a Murray double fault handed three such opportunities to Tsitsipas in the fifth, who took his third and kept the home favourite at arm's length before punching his ticket to round three with a 17th ace of the match.
Tsitsipas produced an astounding 90 winners over the course of the contest, which ended with four hours and 40 minutes on the clock, as a disconsolate Murray trudged off the court to a standing ovation from the home crowd.
© Reuters
The 36-year-old admitted after the defeat that he did not know what the future holds in terms of a possible Wimbledon return next year, but Murray was not the only Briton to come up short on home turf.
Failing to replicate his magical run to last year's semi-finals, British number one Norrie was stunned in a 3-6 6-3 2-6 6-7[3] to American world number 43 Christopher Eubanks in the second round.
The big-hitting Eubanks sent a remarkable 21 aces flying past Norrie, as well as posting 63 winners and only losing 10 of 31 points behind his second serve against the British number one, who admitted that he was simply "outplayed".
Also aiming to build on a previous SW19 success, Broady came into his third-round clash with Denis Shapovalov on cloud nine after stunning Norwegian three-time Grand Slam finalist Casper Ruud in five sets.
Broady took the first set against his Canadian counterpart, but Shapovalov came storming back to triumph 4-6 6-2 7-5 7-5, despite racking up 14 double faults on Court Two.
© Reuters
Elsewhere on Friday, Djokovic quelled a late fightback from three-time Grand Slam winner Stan Wawrinka, managing to get the job done 15 minutes before the 11pm curfew in a 6-3 6-1 7-6[5] success.
Men's and women's top seeds Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek also came through their affairs in straight sets, with the former fending off the challenge of France's Alexandre Muller 6-4 7-6[2] 6-3 in the second round.
Meanwhile, Swiatek advanced to the last 16 courtesy of a 6-2 7-5 win over Petra Martic, who broke the Pole while she was serving for the match but subsequently failed to hold her own serve.
Ons Jabeur also needed just 45 minutes to defeat Zhuoxuan Bai 6-1 6-1, while Aryna Sabalenka and Petra Kvitova progressed to round three, but number five seed Caroline Garcia fell to Marie Bouzkova.
Finally, Holger Rune, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev all made it through to the third round, while, Jannik Sinner, Andrey Rublev and Hubert Hurkacz sailed through to the last 16.
Ben Knapton
