{"id":174952,"date":"2025-08-25T18:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T18:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/174952\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T18:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T18:14:10","slug":"us-open-players-adjust-to-the-crowds-commutes-and-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/174952\/","title":{"rendered":"US Open players adjust to the crowds, commutes and chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 There are some tennis players, such as Frances Tiafoe or Madison Keys or Ben Shelton, who can\u2019t wait for the U.S. Open<\/a> to come around each year, with its boisterous crowds, its bold-faced names<\/a> in the stands, its music at changeovers, its buzz. To them, the louder, the better. Start the show and bring the noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI operate well in chaos,\u201d said Tiafoe<\/a>, twice a semifinalist at Flushing Meadows.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, it all can get out of control, as happened during a match that ended early Monday. There was a delay of more than five minutes while spectators booed and shouted \u2014 egged on by 2021 champion Daniil Medvedev<\/a>, who was angered by chair umpire Greg Allensworth\u2019s ruling after a photographer interrupted play by going on court, of all things.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t want to stop,\u201d Medvedev said about the fans. \u201cSo, whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

US Open chaos is always there, even if it doesn\u2019t reach Medvedev levels<\/p>\n

Not everyone is able to shrug off that sort of mayhem at a Grand Slam tournament famous \u2014 some would say infamous \u2014 for the over-served fans, airplanes roaring overhead, the Manhattan-Queens commute and the odors of everything from marijuana<\/a> to food being grilled.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something you really can\u2019t train the brain to kind of deal with,\u201d 1991-92 champion Monica Seles said. \u201cYou just adjust to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There also are those, such as 2024 champion Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> or 2014 champion Marin Cilic or Petra Kvitova, who didn\u2019t start out with an affinity for the anarchy \u2014 \u201cReally confusing,\u201d was Sabalenka\u2019s initial impression \u2014 but grew to be OK with it. <\/p>\n

Some tennis players go from loving the US Open madness to hating it<\/p>\n

And there are even some whose opinion shifted the other way, from embracing to despising.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my 20s, I loved coming here. There was so much to do. But the older I get, the less I enjoy being here. It\u2019s a little bit chaotic. There\u2019s always a lot of noise. A lot of smells everywhere. I\u2019ve visited most of the places in New York; I don\u2019t need to go to Central Park for the 1,003rd time,\u201d said Adrian Mannarino, 37, a Frenchman who began his 15th U.S. Open on Sunday by upsetting 29th-seeded Tallon Griekspoor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be fun,\u201d Mannarino said about the tournament, \u201cbut sometimes I\u2019m like, \u2018Gosh, I wish I could concentrate a little bit more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The types of scenes at the US Open do not show up at Wimbledon<\/p>\n

The hushes that envelope Wimbledon\u2019s Centre Court or the French Open\u2019s Court Philippe-Chatrier \u2014 which hold nearly 10,000 fewer spectators than 23,859-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium \u2014 are harder to come by in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cWimbledon, for example \u2014 it\u2019s proper, it\u2019s elegant, it\u2019s elevated. People are definitely more quiet and respectful, I guess you could say,\u201d said Emma Navarro, an American who reached the semifinals at Flushing Meadows last year. \u201cU.S. Open, it feels a bit more casual. Casually rowdy, I guess I would call it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a constant hum at Ashe and other arenas.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just fine with Shelton, whose first of two major semifinals came at the 2023 U.S. Open.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I find peace in the chaos,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause I feel more uncomfortable at the quiet tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the retired Agnieszka Radwanksa, the runner-up at Wimbledon in 2012, nothing ever came as easily at the U.S. Open, where she went 0-5 in fourth-round matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything takes so much energy from you and just sucks it up. Everything is loud. All the smells around, like the hamburgers. Everything is really noisy. The traffic,\u201d Radwanska said. \u201cI respect the players that don\u2019t see the difference and don\u2019t feel that and can play like nothing is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

US Open runner-up Casper Ruud dislikes New York\u2019s smell of marijuana<\/p>\n

Some find the Big Apple itself as problematic as the tournament site.<\/p>\n

Elisabetta Cocciaretto, the Italian who stunned 2024 U.S. Open finalist Jessica Pegula in Wimbledon\u2019s first round last month, never felt at ease until she stopped staying at an official tournament hotel and switched to a more off-the-beaten-path spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to separate myself a bit,\u201d Cocciaretto said. \u201cBecause otherwise, you\u2019re amid the madness. And if there\u2019s too much of that, your head explodes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casper Ruud, the 2022 U.S. Open runner-up<\/a>, felt \u201coverwhelmed\u201d the first time he came to the event as a junior.<\/p>\n

While he\u2019s come to enjoy New York, particularly the restaurants, there\u2019s one thing that bothers him about the city: \u201cI\u2019m not a big fan of the smell of weed when you walk around. … Every corner of every street, you smell it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Howard Fendrich has been the AP\u2019s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https:\/\/apnews.com\/author\/howard-fendrich<\/a>. More AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 There are some tennis players, such as Frances Tiafoe or Madison Keys or Ben…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":174953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99522,99524,3881,2477,21485,10789,3099,10338,15187,27762,57,99523,18826,21487,23024,3344,6991,83512,405,403,48732,62,17645,1464,62213,67,132,68,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-174952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-adrian-mannarino","9":"tag-agnieszka-radwanksa","10":"tag-ap-top-news","11":"tag-aryna-sabalenka","12":"tag-ben-shelton","13":"tag-casper-ruud","14":"tag-daniil-medvedev","15":"tag-elisabetta-cocciaretto","16":"tag-emma-navarro","17":"tag-frances-tiafoe","18":"tag-general-news","19":"tag-greg-allensworth","20":"tag-howard-fendrich","21":"tag-jessica-pegula","22":"tag-madison-keys","23":"tag-marijuana","24":"tag-marin-cilic","25":"tag-monica-seles","26":"tag-new-york","27":"tag-new-york-city","28":"tag-petra-kvitova","29":"tag-sports","30":"tag-tallon-griekspoor","31":"tag-tennis","32":"tag-u-s-open-tennis-championships","33":"tag-united-states","34":"tag-unitedstates","35":"tag-us","36":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115090769120558279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}