The rowdiest crowd in tennis just got rowdier
Summary
- Tennis fans have always had to wait until certain moments in a match to file to their seats. But New York’s major is doing things a new, noisier way.
There’s a tennis revolution taking place at the U.S. Open this summer. It isn’t a bold new backhand, or a 170-mile-per-hour serve.
It has to do with scrapping one of the sport’s most refined traditions: making fans wait to take their seats.
Throughout tennis history, late-arriving patrons have been allowed to file into the bleachers only during changeovers, when the players switch sides of the court. The idea is to keep commotion to a minimum during play.
But for the most boisterous—and booziest—of the major tournaments, that would no longer do. This year, the fans closest to the action can find their seats after any game they like.
“It will be new for everyone," said Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director. Allaster seemed to predict some player blowback: “We’ll find our way through it."
Indeed, through the early rounds of the 2024 Open, players have remarked on an unfamiliar sight: fans bumping and nudging past one another, drinks in hand, just as they’re getting ready to hoist the ball for a first serve.
“Sometimes maybe somebody is wearing a white shirt or something," said Coco Gauff after her first-round win on Monday, “only today I told my opponent to wait for a second for this person to sit down."
The U.S. Open, the grand finale of tennis’ calendar of majors, has made a habit lately of smashing its own attendance records, and set a single-day record on Monday. All those bodies mean that the familiar logjams of fans waiting to tiptoe in during a match’s down moments would no longer suffice.
“We are trying to make things faster and more entertaining for the fans," said Darren Cahill, an ESPN analyst and coach of men’s No. 1 Jannik Sinner. “The quicker we can get fans to their seats to enjoy the entertainment, the better it is."
At tennis’s most hallowed ground, the All-England Club, such a breach of tradition would be as unseemly as a player wearing tie-dye in the Wimbledon final.
But the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Queens has always been home to certain rowdy stylings: ultra-late nights, boisterous crowds, and the heavily imbibed Honey Deuce cocktail.
Ben Shelton, the home-country favorite with the explosive serve who played college tennis at the University of Florida, isn’t bothered by the new rule.
“I noticed it, but once the point starts, I don’t notice it," Shelton said after his first-round victory. “There’s a lot of situations where I’ve been in that’s a lot crazier than a couple of people walking with drinks back to their seat."
It remains to be seen whether the tour as a whole will share Shelton’s laid-back attitude. Complaints about distractions are as common to tennis as forehand winners.
“The players need to be more relaxed over certain restrictions we’ve had for a hundred years," Cahill said. “The game is moving."
Write to Jim Chairusmi at jim.chairusmi@wsj.com and Robert O’Connell at robert.oconnell@wsj.com
