WIMBLEDON, England — In Britain, there are many days that people enjoy celebrating, like Boxing Day, St. Swithin’s Day and May Day. Flying Ant Day is definitely not one of those.
WIMBLEDON, England — In Britain, there are many days that people enjoy celebrating, like Boxing Day, St. Swithin’s Day and May Day. Flying Ant Day is definitely not one of those.
Flying Ant Day is the annoying occasion each summer, usually in July, when millions of flying ants set off to initiate the mating season. For several hours Wednesday, the eager little pests descended on Wimbledon.
“I definitely have taken home a few both in my belly and in my bags,” said Johanna Konta of Britain, who beat Donna Vekic in three sets on Centre Court.
She actually swallowed some?
“I’m pretty sure I have,” she said.
Vekic was repeatedly brushing the ants off her arms before points, but Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France had them in more invasive spots.
“It was special sometimes — it was in my nose and in my ear,” he said.
Tsonga said he had experienced similar situations in the United States and Australia, especially when playing under lights.
What the airborne annoyances lacked in size — “very small,” Tsonga said — they made up for in number: “a lot.”
The bugs began to appear around noon, with some landing on any surface they could find. Players could be seen swatting away the ants, and certain angles made it appear as if the players were being overwhelmed at times.
In a 2007 baseball playoff game in Cleveland, Joba Chamberlain, a pitcher for the New York Yankees, was surrounded by midges on the mound — an invasion that coincided with a bout of wildness that may have altered the course of that game and that series, which Cleveland won.
On Wednesday at Wimbledon, the flying ants were everywhere, but they did not seem to affect the outcome of any match.
Andy Murray, the No. 1 seed and a two-time Wimbledon champion, grew up in Scotland but said he had never experienced anything like the ants before.
“There was maybe one time today when there was a fly went just as I was about to serve,” he said.
When informed that the bugs were actually flying ants, he replied: “OK. I didn’t know there was such a thing.”
But ants were not the only things flying around the courts Wednesday. Some coins went airborne in a bizarre display of petulance from Daniil Medvedev, who had upset Stan Wawrinka in the first round.
After he lost a hotly contested second-round match against Ruben Bemelmans that included some disputed decisions by the umpire, Medvedev pulled coins out of his wallet and threw them at the base of the umpire’s chair before he marched off the court.
“In the heat of the moment, I did a bad thing,” Medvedev said. “I apologize for this.”
Medvedev claimed that he did not know why he had done it, and that there was no symbolism in the act, no allegation that the umpire had been biased.
“No, it was just that I was packing my things and I saw my wallet,” he said. “As I said, in the heat of the moment, I did a stupid thing.”
Obviously, he was bugged. It was a day for that.