Maria Sakkari saved a stray bug during her latest match at the Washington Open, only for a ball boy to kill it moments later. The Greek star was left rueing a wasted effort after appearing to notice the insect on the court.<\/p>\n
She picked it up carefully and walked off with a smile on her face. The world No.90 then received generous applause from the crowd, as she placed the tiny animal safely down at the back of the court before getting ready to return serve. Her efforts were also lauded by the lead commentator.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood work there from Sakkari, taking care of the local wildlife,\u201d he said, noting the extent she went to not cause any harm. \u201cVery delicately done.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, salvation for the bug lasted merely a few seconds. Before Sakkari could play her next shot, a ballboy walked over and ruthlessly squashed it beneath his trainer.<\/p>\n
Sign up here<\/a> to receive all the latest tennis and Wimbledon<\/a> news straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n The 29-year-old did at least see the funny side, laughing as she realised her act had been futile. The commentator also joked: \u201cOh, dear me, the ball kid didn\u2019t get the memo.\u201d<\/p>\n However, after the incident went viral on social media, a number of fans suggested that the youngster was anything but the villain of the piece. It was pointed out that the bug appeared to be a spotted lanternfly.<\/p>\n The insect originates from parts of China and Vietnam. However, it\u2019s said to have spread invasively to the United States, as well as Japan and South Korea, and is potentially harmful to plant life.<\/p>\n At least Sakkari was soon able to smile for the right reasons. In a shock upset, she ended up winning her contest with second seed Emma Navarro 7-5 7-6 to make the quarter-finals.<\/p>\n For all the latest tennis and Wimbledon<\/a> news you can join our WhatsApp community<\/a> here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maria Sakkari saved a stray bug during her latest match at the Washington Open, only for a ball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[13369,13368,13371,13370,13372,101,118,12700,56,54,55,6963,11572],"class_list":{"0":"post-20659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-emma-navarro","9":"tag-maria-sakkari","10":"tag-sakkari-bug","11":"tag-sakkari-navarro","12":"tag-sakkari-washington-open","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-tennis","15":"tag-tennis-section","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom","19":"tag-washington-open","20":"tag-wta-tour"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}