Carlos Alcaraz (n.2), who this Thursday defeated Alexander Zverev (n.6) in the Indian Wells quarterfinals, acknowledged that he is somewhat afraid of bees after an invasion of hundreds of these insects forced to suspend the game for almost two hours.
“I’m not going to lie: I’m a little afraid of bees,” said the Spaniard, laughing and speaking to ATP.
“I was seeing some bees when I was warming up (to resume the match) so I wasn’t 100% sure about the bees around. The referees told me to try but I wasn’t 100% sure about starting the match again.” , he pointed out.
Only 9 minutes of the match had been played (1-1, 15-0 for Alcaraz) when the chair umpire ordered the duel to stop on the center court of the Californian desert tournament because that “invasion of bees” – in his words – made impossible to play.
Alcaraz, who had most of the bees on his part of the court, suffered a sting without major consequences and both tennis players ran to the locker room.
Bee attack in Indian Wells.
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The origin of the problem was a ‘spidercam’, a high-altitude camera that moves suspended by cables and where hundreds of these flying insects had been installed.
Then the unexpected savior of the day came into action: a beekeeper who, armed with a vacuum cleaner and surprisingly without any type of protection on his face or hands beyond sunglasses, was in charge of removing the bees from that chamber and also from the track and the first rows of the stands.
The beekeeper was received with applause from the fans and with smiles from the tennis players once back on the court, although Alcaraz was not happy when the duel resumed because he continued to find some isolated bees, for example on his clothes and objects.
Current champion of Indian Wells, Alcaraz will face the Italian Jannik Sinner (n.3) in the semifinals, who won the last edition of the Australian Open and who has not yet lost in 2024 (19-0 also counting his last three matches of 2023 ).