Invigorating or Infuriating, and Definitely Indiscreet

The post-match interviews on Court 18 were not restricted to the winner on Wednesday.(Djokovic, Sharapova, Serena Breeze Through)

Shortly after Australian Nick Kyrgios answered queries on the grass in full swagger following his second-round victory, the Fanatics answered their own on a patch of lawn near the exits as television crews from Britain and beyond gathered around and requested another dose of enthusiasm.

Wimbledon is the biggest fishbowl in tennis, and the Fanatics - a group of nearly 30 green-and-gold-clad Australian fans - were delighted to keep swimming (and singing) for the cameras.(Kyrgios Courts Controversy)

Who could blame them for being out of tune when some had spent the last three nights in tents, waiting for access to daily grounds passes in the Wimbledon queue?

This is not the way it usually works for the Fanatics. The group was founded in 1997 as a cheer squad for the Australian Davis Cup team, with backing from former Wimbledon champion John Newcombe, who was the captain. It has since grown into a professional operation that organizes tours worldwide through its website to everything from Oktoberfest in Munich to Anzac Day in Gallipoli, Turkey.

The Fanatics get free tickets to Davis Cup matches and to the Australian Open and have become particular fixtures at Lleyton Hewitt's matches through the years, which has been great for Hewitt, but not always a treat for those seated behind the block of Fanatics in the Melbourne Park stands for the four hours that a Hewitt match typically runs.(Nishikori Out With Injury)

The Fanatics have their moments. They have wit. They have youthful energy, even if there were a couple of grandmothers among them on Wednesday. But they are also a relentless presence, as difficult to block out as the outback sun.

Like them or loathe them, you are stuck with them, and though Wimbledon has long been an ode to silence and restraint in a sports world where every increment of time is usually viewed as a marketing opportunity, the Fanatics have made inroads at the All England Club as well.

"We've had one or two calls from indignant people," said Johnny Perkins, a spokesman for the All England Club.

The calls came from viewers watching on television who wanted their typical Wimbledon with the traditional soundtrack. For now, the club has no plans to break up the party, leaving it to the chair umpire's discretion to maintain law and order.

"I understand people who don't like us," said Gareth Fletcher, a 27-year-old with a blond mop top from Gold Coast, Australia, who is one of the Fanatics' tour guides in chief. "It's all about tradition for them, and they don't want anything ruining their experience. But at the end of the day, if I can't stand up and support the players, how is there going to be any atmosphere at the matches? How do you create that?"

Wimbledon, it must be said, has done just fine without the Fanatics for more than a century, although it has certainly had its share of crazies through the years: Centre Court streakers and Jeff Tarango's ex-wife Benedicte, who slapped chair umpire Bruno Rebeuh across the face after a contentious match in 1995.

But the beer-stained set has generally been restricted to exceptional circumstances: the so-called People's Sundays when rain delays in the first week forced an extra day of play on the usual day of rest at Wimbledon; or the memorable People's Monday in 2001, when Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia beat Patrick Rafter of Australia in a rescheduled men's final that felt more like the Davis Cup.

But the Fanatics are planning to keep queuing every night until Saturday.

"That's what the queue is there for," said Richard Lewis, the chief executive of the All England Club. "They've got plenty of passion."

Jack Sock might be less pleased. He is a good friend to Kyrgios, his PlayStation rival and Chipotle dinner partner, but apparently no friend of the Fanatics.

On Tuesday, during his first-round loss to the Australian Sam Groth, he had exchanges with Fletcher and eventually struck a ball hard in his direction in the third set, hitting the low courtside barrier behind which Fletcher and a few other Fanatics were sitting. Sock was given a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct and a $2,500 fine.

The fact that Sock broke a finger in a fall during the match, which he revealed in a Twitter message on Wednesday, might explain some of his surliness.

"I said, 'Come on Grothie! Let's go!' and he hit the ball at me," Fletcher said. "I've been doing this for nine years, and I've never seen anybody be such a sore loser. I mean, who hits a ball at a tennis fan?"

Fletcher, attending his first Wimbledon, said the American player also cursed at him earlier in the match as he told him to "shut up" after he had cheered for Groth.

"I should have told him to stick a sock in it," Fletcher said.

Even for the Fanatics, the best lines apparently come too late, but Fletcher and his cohorts have still come up with plenty of timely chants and commentary this year. They were in the front two rows on Monday on Court 2 for Hewitt's farewell Wimbledon singles match against the veteran Jarkko Nieminen and were such a constant presence that one began to feel Nieminen, a good-natured Finn also playing in his final Wimbledon, deserved to be assigned a cheering squad of his own to compensate ("Helsinki, Helsinki, Helsinki, Oi, Oi, Oi").

After returning to the queue on Tuesday, the Fanatics got a late-night visit from the Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis, 19, who ordered them pizzas and hung out with them in the tents for a while.

After the gates opened on Wednesday, they hustled to Court 18 and took up front-row seats for a double feature: Bernard Tomic's straight-set victory over Pierre-Hugues Herbert followed by Kyrgios' straight-set victory over Juan Monaco.

"For me, it's no problem," said Monaco, the well-liked Argentine veteran. "It's amusing. Tennis shouldn't be all shot, polite applause, shot, polite applause. It's good to shake it up. If they cross the line, it's a problem, but they didn't cross the line."

The Fanatics have found perhaps their ideal muse in Kyrgios, the combustible 20-year-old Australian already prone to running dialogues - he surely talks to himself in the mirror in the morning - who simply incorporates the Fanatics into the on-court banter, laughing at their jokes and sometimes adjusting the play list.

"How do you know these songs?" he asked at one stage when he wasn't heckling the chair umpire about whether he felt "strong to be in the chair."

This is, of course, no way for Kyrgios to make friends and influence people at his still relatively new workplace, but then he already has ready-made allies in the front two rows - even if those allies surely will have a much harder time securing prime seats on Centre Court or Court 1 for Friday's third-round rematch with Milos Raonic, who beat Kyrgios in the quarterfinals here last year.

Somehow, one suspects, the Fanatics will still make themselves heard.