For years, I was passionate about tennis. Notice, I didn’t say I was good at tennis, but passion, I had lots. And then I grew frustrated with it and took a rather long vacation from the game — about ten years. Several months ago, I started playing again and have discovered the passion once more. I’m older and play wiser. (But, again, notice I didn’t say better.) For those who know what it means, I’m about a 4.0 player.

Whenever you are “into” something, you start seeing it show up in more and more places. I’ve gone years without even following the sport beyond, perhaps, the mens’ final rounds of Wimbledon or the U.S. Open.

I guess because I don’t yet follow the professional sport again, I was rather intrigued to learn that “a melee involving at least 20 warring fans” broke out at the Australian Open between fans of Novak Djokovic of Serbia and fans of Amer Delic, a Bosnian-born American (once you get beyond Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick, I’m lost).

In fact, I can pretty much say that is the first time in my life I have ever seen the words “melee” and “tennis” appear together in the same paragraph.

The “melee” in the video above is explained in this blog post on NYTimes.com.

I can remember some hard-fought battles between Sampras and Agassi and earlier between Connors and McEnroe, but there was nothing like this.

I guess tennis got a little more exciting during my absence.