An invasion of bees forced the Indian Wells quarterfinal match between Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev to be stopped for a few hours this Thursday. “I have never seen anything like this in a tennis match,” acknowledged the Spaniard after sealing his place in the semifinals of the tournament 6-3, 6-1. “When we ran off the track, we were watching the bee invasion on TV and we laughed a lot. It was fun for me, this match will be remembered for that, not for the tennis,” Alcaraz said after the match.
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” made it impossible to play. After a while, a beekeeper appeared, who cleared the court of insects so that the game could resume. “We decided to warm up again and I saw that the bees were gone, just one or two, so I tried not to think about the bees anymore. I tried to concentrate on the ball, on the point,” Alcaraz summarized.