TENNIS and lunatics are a natural combination.
And there's nothing like the manicured courts of Wimbledon to attract a drunk father of a tennis player screaming expletives in Serbian while smashing a mobile phone. This year there's been 11 potential stalkers.
British police have warned 11 people - "fixated individuals" - to stay away from the strawberries and cream set and away from players such as Maria Sharapova.
But why is it that this racquet sport has a history of attracting so many psychos? And why are half of those nutcases the parents of tennis players?
Think of the volatile Damir Dokic who was booted out of US Open in 2000 raving about the price of salmon. In the very same year, at Wimbledon, he swathed his big frame in a British flag and decried England as a fascist country.
Think Mary Pierce's weird dad Jim, who was notorious for screaming during her matches: "Mary, kill the bitch!" Nice.
After they had split as a coach/daughter combo, Jim said: "Mary is like a finely tuned sports car. Well, I built the Ferrari and now I want the keys back." Who says that?
But in the world of tennis, anything goes. It's a sport that has no one raising an eyebrow in the locker room when you sell the rights of your first-born's first year of their life, to a magazine. No one cares that, God love her, Serena Williams can take a green handbag, as well as a racquet bag, out onto court and into the press conference as she did at last year's Australian Open.
Tennis is the only sport where fashion and beauty questions in post-match press conferences can, outnumber real questions on the game.
"Maria/Ana/Jelena/Seren a what are you wearing?"; is the usual line.
Grand slams become glam slams.
The glamorous, chain-smoking mother of Novak Djokovic is one of the flamboyant parenting types of the game. After Djokovic won the Australian Open this year, trouncing world No.1 Roger Federer, his mother Dijana had no qualms in offering up her opinion.
After butting out another ciggie into the Australian Open turf she threw her head back and laughed at Federer's demise.
"The king is dead, long live the king'," she said.
And not many world sports can morbidly boast having one of their players stabbed on court.
Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a quarter-final match in Hamburg in 1993. Seles, then 19, was rushed to hospital with a wound 1.5 centimetres deep in her upper back from a boning knife.
Gunter Parche, a 39-year-old unemployed lathe operator, attacked Seles so Steffi Graf could regain the world No.1 ranking. Parche got what he wanted.
With Seles off the court, Graf swept the next four grand slam singles titles, beginning with the 1993 French Open and subsequently the No.1 spot.
Earlier this year, Martina Navratilova openly questioned the game's environment since the Seles attack in a New York Times article.
"It used to be that you would see people running towards you and think, 'Oh they want autographs,"' she said. "But now you wonder, 'Oh my God, are they carrying a pen or a knife?"'
Which brings us back to those nutty stalkers. Among the 11 loonies barred from the All England Club, it was revealed that a member of one player's family has been issued with a restraining order barring him from Wimbledon during the two weeks.
Wimbledon has been a trouble ground for the obsessive types.
Sharapova had a stalker banned from the tournament in 2005. That man, Matthew Anthony Page, had lunged at her during a competition in Los Angeles earlier.
There, Page fan vaulted a fence and then threatened to "punch or kick" the then 18-year-old Russian star after being stopped by security staff.
When she was interviewed about all this in 2005, Sharapova made a funny observation about the security team appointed to protect her life. That's her life.
"I'm not entirely comfortable being surrounded by security people," she said.
"But I have to accept it comes with the territory."
Makes sense, doesn't it?
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