NEW YORK, Sept 5 \u2014 Arthur Ashe Stadium’s noise and spectacle are a big part of the U.S. Open’s appeal \u200bbut Iga Swiatek said on Saturday that she did not mind swapping the tournament’s biggest and most boisterous venue for the more intimate surroundings of the Grandstand.<\/p>\n
With a capacity of \u200cnearly 24,000, the main showcourt is the beating heart of the year’s final Grand Slam and one of tennis’s loudest stages, dwarfing the \u2060outside venue where Swiatek secured a 7-6(3) 7-6(3) \u200bthird-round victory over Marie Bouzkova.<\/p>\n
However, the Polish eighth \u2060seed said she was comfortable playing in front of a little over 8,000 fans in the picturesque \u200cfacility in the sprawling complex.<\/p>\n
“Well, \u200cAshe is really alive. Sometimes too much, I’d say,” Swiatek told reporters.<\/p>\n
“This court is \u2060nice. Honestly, I don’t see any negatives about it. It \u2060has fewer screens. It’s smaller in a way that’s more normal, I would say, because Ashe is huge. The court seems small compared to the green part that you have around it.<\/p>\n
“It’s not easy to play on that court. The Grandstand seems nice and normal, a nice court. I don’t really mind, honestly.”<\/p>\n
Swiatek was not alone in finding Flushing Meadows’ biggest stage slightly overwhelming and \u200cat times difficult to manage.<\/p>\n
Top seed Alexander Zverev chided a spectator \u200bwho attempted to offer him coaching advice during his 6-2 7-6(2) 6-2 victory over Alejandro Tabilo in the evening session.<\/p>\n
“I already have a coach and I pay him a lot,” he snarled at the fan, before producing some of his best tennis to go through.<\/p>\n
Czech Jakub Mensik also complained about being heckled by one spectator during his evening clash with local favourite Learner Tien on Louis Armstrong Stadium, before having another ejected by security personnel for a similar reason.<\/p>\n
After his 6-7(4) 6-3 \u200b6-0 6-3 defeat by Belgian Alexander Blockx at the same venue earlier, Italy’s fifth seed Flavio Cobolli said the noise \u200clevels at the \u200cU.S. Open were \u2060unlike anything that players typically encounter on the tour.<\/p>\n
“I said the first day, we always play with the silence. We’re always used to playing with nobody moving, nobody talking, with a great atmosphere,” Cobolli said.<\/p>\n
“Here it’s really different. We have a great atmosphere, but it’s very, very loud. For us, it’s very tough \u200cto play.<\/p>\n
“Maybe we have to play \u200blike this for more weeks (on tour), because if you \u200ccome here and there’s a different \u2060rule, it’s very \u200btough for us. I didn’t lose because of the noise, of course.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in New York; Editing \u200bby Ken Ferris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK, Sept 5 \u2014 Arthur Ashe Stadium’s noise and spectacle are a big part of the U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2879,2878,67,2881,2880,53,54,2883,2884,50,2882,28,2877,2885,2369],"class_list":["post-67105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-entertainment","tag-homes","tag-jobs","tag-local","tag-news","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-tennis","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}