Tennis: Williams not rattled by rodent

The 16-year-old Venus Williams might have been warned about undesirables in the tennis world, but it comes to something when your match is held up for 20 minutes by a rat in the Centre Court stand.

What appeared to be just another tiresome Mexican wave turned out to be panic-stricken spectators leaping out of their seats at the Lipton Championships. Old habits die hard, and buzzards still fly above the site, possibly remembering the rubbish dump that was transformed into a magnificent stadium complex by the Buchholz brothers.

"The rat?" Venus said incredulously after winning her first-round match against Ginger Helgeson Nielsen, 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 on Thursday night. "I thought it was some type of mouse, not a rat. A full-blown rat? Did they put it in a box or something?"

They did, but how is perhaps best explained by the rat- catcher-in-chief, Adam Fract-enberg, who doubles as the assistant ticket manager for the tournament, where the start of play was delayed by rain yesterday.

"I was in the office when something came over the radio that there was an iguana on the court," Adam said. "I've seen a few of them here when no one was about. I'm something of a reptile lover and I've kept snakes. I thought people might be scared of an iguana, so I said I'd go and catch it. I was talking a good game, all macho, and the other people in the ticket office called my bluff.

"When I went up [to the stand] there was a commotion in the corner. The operations people were pulling up plants. I asked them if what they had seen was an iguana or a minotaur. When they told me it was a rat I jumped back - my only connection with rats is that I used to feed them to my snakes.

"We pulled trees out and tried to catch the rat with cardboard boxes, but it jetted out from underneath and got away. Spectators parted like the Red Sea as it ran down the isles to another corner of the stadium.

"Then out of nowhere, a guy I had never seen before came up with a rat trap. I asked him what he was doing with it, and he just shrugged. I caught the rat with a pair of pliers and put it in the trap. I had it in my hand, and everybody was clapping. People have been saying it was a big rat. Well, I'm from New York, and I would describe it as average. I think the guy who owns the rat trap took it away. I'm sure it was set free somewhere away from the tournament site. I guess that's the magic of Key Biscayne."

There has not been so much fuss about a critter at a tennis tournament since a raccoon dropped from an elevator ceiling at the US Open and dashed about the Stadium Court at New York's Flushing Meadow.

In Miami, however, one particular tale of a rat has run and run and has become part of the lore of the Panthers ice hockey club.

"Last year," recalled Fractenberg, whose links with local sports events include working for the Panthers, "there was an incident in a pre-season hockey game. They had a little rat problem, being downtown. A rat got into the Panthers' locker room. Their No 27, Scott Mellanby, gave it a slap-shot, and that was the end of that problem.

"Later on that evening, Mellanby went on to score two goals. Word got around about the rat, so it was decided Mellanby had scored a rat-trick. Next day, slowly at first, people came in and threw little plastic rats on the ice. This caught on. Plastic rats were thrown every time the Panthers scored - I've tossed a rat or two in my day - and soon the team was marketing rat T-shirts and plastic rats in the numbers of the fans' favourite players.

"By the time the Stanley Cup play-offs came round, more than a thousand rats were thrown on the ice in a game against the Colorado Avalanche. Their goalie, Patrick Roy, had to hide in his net."