Melbourne: Police used pepper spray on fans at the Australian Open on Tuesday when crowd trouble hit the Grand Slam event for the second year running.
Three people were evicted and interviewed for assaulting police, failing to obey lawful direction and indecent language.
In a statement, Victoria Police said they resorted to the spray because they feared for their safety after fans became aggressive toward them, having failed to cut out what they described as "offensive chanting".
The fracas happened during the first-round match involving last year's runner-up Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Konstantinos Economidis, a Greek qualifier.
At around 8:20 pm local time (1120 hrs GMT), Gonzalez had been leading 6-4,1-2 when the match was stopped for around 10 minutes and the fans were removed from the stadium by police.
Eyewitnesses said trouble started when police stepped in to deal with a group of around 40 fans, who had been singing loudly between points in the match on Margaret Court Arena.
"It was upsetting, I've never seen anything like it in my life at a tennis match," Stephen Butterick, a BBC Radio producer said.
"The whole atmosphere had been like a Davis Cup match crossed with a football match.
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