Rowdy Fans, We’d Like You to Meet Pepper Spray

No need to warm up your pipes if you’re headed to the Australian Open. Singing isn’t allowed.

Not between points, anyway.

Things got a little crazy at the first-round match between Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Konstantinos Economidis of Greece. Some of their respective countrymen pumped up the volume in a ready-to-rumble kind of way and threatened to put the “fan” into “fanatic.” Police stepped in to subdue the more obnoxious vocalists and all H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks broke loose.

Five fans were given the boot and three had a face-to-face encounter with pepper spray. The match was held up twice while the brouhaha was brought under control. Gonzalez moved onto the next round with a 6-4, 7-6, 6-1 win that thankfully didn’t spur a riot.

Can you imagine the Swiss doing that for Roger Federer (or a pre-busted Martina Hingis)? We were in Switzerland for a while last year and trust us, no one even hummed, never mind broke into song. We didn’t even hear boisterous singing in Austria, which makes us wonder what exactly they were trying to pull with The Sound of Music.