Flying Ants Descend On Wimbledon

Over the past 68 years at The Championships there have been 19 different Centre Court invasions, but only six times has non-paying intruders disrupted play.

On the outside courts on Tuesday, a number of flying ants – attracted by the 29°C temperatures and little rain in London in recent weeks – briefly interrupted play at Wimbledon.

“I’d never seen that before,” admitted No. 24 seed Sam Querrey, after he beat Nikoloz Basilashvili on Court No. 18. “Luckily it was 30 or 45 minutes. I don't know what it was, but they seemed to kind of go away after a while. If it got much worse, I almost wanted to stop because they were hitting you in the face when you were trying to hit balls.

“I also lost a set when the ants came. If I had won that set, probably it wouldn't have bugged me as much… If it was bees or something, I'm sure they would have stopped.”

Tsonga, the No. 12 seed, who played on Court No. 2 against qualifier Simone Bolelli, said, “I’ve had a few experience in United States sometimes. With the light at night sometimes you have big bugs. Or in Australia also you have these kind of things. But that was a little bit different, because those ones were very small, but a lot of them. So it was special sometimes – they were in my nose and in my ear.”

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Aljaz Bedene, who beat Damir Dzumhur on Court No. 3, admitted, "They did bother us, but when you are playing a point, you only see the ball. But after the point, yeah, they were just flying around. Hopefully that was just today and they will be gone by Friday."

There has been six previous instances when insects or animals have disrupted play on Centre Court since 1949.

Courtesy: Wimbledon Compendium