Photo credit: Garrett Ellwood/USTA
By Alix Ramsay
Maybe it is just age or maybe it is just grumpy cynicism (one of the job requirements for this gig) but it does seem that tennis is the last thing anyone is talking about at the US Open.
We kicked off on Sunday with the usual player complaints about the all-pervading smell of weed around some of the outside match courts and the practice courts out in the park and then skipped happily – one could say tripped happily – towards the influencer debate.
Far be it from anyone at 10sballs to judge a person on their personal habits (Lord knows, my vices are many and various) but it does seem a bit rich when the sight of an unlit cigarette can send the security people into a state of near hysteria, there being a smoking ban in all public parks in New York City, but lighting up a spliff? Apparently, that is perfectly fine (although the smoking ban applies to cannabis, too, not that anybody notices). But we digress.
Naomi Osaka is one of the star acts of the Open. She dresses for the occasion in unique designer creations for her walk-on, some of which make her look like a ship in full sail, and much thought has clearly gone into them. And then she wins. Eventually.
Her first match was interrupted when a group of “influencers” held a photoshoot in a hospitality suite in the Arthur Ashe stadium (around 100 of these pretty young people have been accredited this year). To ensure these “content creators” looked their absolute best, they had brought ring lights which, when fired up, distracted both Osaka and her opponent. At one point, the umpire, Kader Nouni, stopped play and told the artistic little dears to cut it out.
But did anyone in New York learn from this? Are you mad?
Come Osaka’s second match, the umpire – this time it was Marijana Veljovic – was again in action, this time stopping play three times to tell the crowd to keep quiet. This was not just “quiet please, players are ready”; this was a need to tell people to shut up because the players couldn’t hear themselves think. Osaka finally beat Katerina Siniakova in three sets, not that anyone seemed to care.
Now, no one in their right mind goes to New York for peace and quiet and any tennis fan used to the deafening silence of Wimbledon is in for a shock at the Open. But now it is getting out of hand.
If the paid influencers are untroubled by the tennis going on around them, the crowd are now very much the same. Constantly talking, moving around, eating and drinking, they, too, are taking photos and videos to post on social media. What used to be a constant thrum of ambient noise has now become a cacophony, particularly when the roof is closed on Ashe.
“Today the umpire told everyone to be quiet more than I’ve ever heard an umpire tell a crowd to be quiet,” Osaka said. “I tell people I normally just focus on the match and the court, but there was a moment where there was people shouting and you could hear it quite clearly. I think it bothered my opponent, too.
“I think obviously if you come to a sporting event, you have to respect the sport. I feel like it’s common courtesy to read up on the sport, especially the etiquette.
“It could be a good thing for people [influencers] to make the sport of tennis popular to their specific audience, but I think it has to be managed a lot better, especially in the situation like my first-round match.”
Siniakova was in full agreement. “I would say a big thank you [to the umpire] because definitely it is loud. The crowd is moving and sometimes it’s not easy to hear the ball or anything. Sometimes the people don’t realise that even when they are up [high] and they’re talking, you can hear it down [on the court].”
The USTA’s new CEO, Craig Tiley, has said that he wants to turn the US Open into a “tennis Disneyland” which is fine if you want to see Pluto playing Goofy with Mickey Mouse as the umpire but it misses the point.
If you want to go to Disneyland, go there. If you want to watch the tennis – and have paid an arm and a leg for the ticket – you probably want to watch the tennis. And if you have worked yourself into the ground for a lifetime to get the chance to play on a show court at the US Open, you don’t want a bunch of bright, young things posing in front of their iPhones and wittering at the top of their voices as you face match point.
Some of the players are all for the invasion of the influencers – Aryna Sabalenka and Daniil Medvedev to name but two – while others, even the younger ones, are less enthusiastic. Coco Gauff, always a sensible voice in a crisis, put it best: “I definitely think it’s cool to have a new demographic and I definitely think it helps grow the sport. But if you’re being invited to a red carpet, you wouldn’t show up in jeans. I think it’s just follow the etiquette of the sport. That’s all.”
Photo credit: Dustin Satloff/USTA
Meanwhile, while no one was paying much attention, Sascha Zverev just about got over the line in his second, consecutive, late-night five-setter. He stumbled past Quentin Halys at 2.15 on Friday morning. As the top seed in the absence of Jannik Sinner, Zverev is revelling in that billing – but only up to a point. “It’s great to be announced as the top seed on this court until you almost lose every time,” he said.
He had just about summed up the whole tournament: the US Open – the biggest and the best tennis tournament in the world; the one where the tennis really doesn’t matter.
Still, like the song goes: things can only get better…