Arthur Ashe Stadium seats 23,859 and hums with energy even when it’s relatively quiet, making the atmosphere at the U.S. Open unique among Grand Slams.
NEW YORK — Not long after Dominik Koepfer rolled his ankle against Carlos Alcaraz in the first game of their prime-time, first-round match at the U.S. Open, his team sitting courtside started asking questions.
Koepfer had bent his ankle at a nauseating angle, immediately hopped to his chair to rip off his sock and shoe and get a tape job from the doctor. Throughout the next few games, his team — which was not privy to the doctor’s assessment — was desperately trying to figure out how bad the injury was. Once Koepfer shouted, “It’s [bad]. The doctor said it’s [bad],” they changed tack and continually asked the 75th-ranked player if maybe it wasn’t the best idea to keep playing tennis on said ankle. What Koepfer yelled back was not about the $191,000 he stood to earn by making the second round or the grim honor of competing to the end.Of the many elements that distinguish the U.S. Open from the three other Grand Slam tournaments, Arthur Ashe Stadium is literally the biggest.At the French Open, Court Philippe-Chatrier dazzles with its striking red clay. Wimbledon’s aim, with its velvet-green grass, lush florals and wooden accents, is to evoke the quaint ideal of tennis in an English garden. The All-England Club’s Centre Court is commonly regarded as the most illustrious of the sport’s stages, and its atmosphere is appropriately church-like. Even during the rowdiest matches this year, the crowd fell so silent during points out of respect for the players and the game that the sound of a sneeze or, more frequently, an ill-timed pop of a champagne bottle, traveled clear across the stadium. Any errant chatter was usually met with an indignant “shhh!” from neighboring attendees.As for capacity, it fits 14,979 spectators, roughly even with Court Philippe-Chatrier’s 14,962. Rod Laver Arena at the Australian Open is capped at about 14,500. Arthur Ashe Stadium, on the other hand, is a paradigm of American excess. It seats 23,859 and hums with energy even when it’s relatively quiet. Players say matches at tennis’s most grandiose show court are unlike any other: overwhelming, distracting and electrifying, all in one. Those feelings are amplified over the tournament’s marquee stretch on Labor Day Weekend. “It’s the size. It’s the echo because of the roof construction. It’s everything combined. … People, New Yorkers, love their tennis. They don’t care if they stay up very late, post-midnight, because they get excited,” Novak Djokovic said. “I love it. It’s great because every Grand Slam has its own charm, in a way. Comparing to, for example, Wimbledon, it’s a complete contrast. In Wimbledon, it’s different than here. Here is all about entertainment, fun, good energy, good vibes. If you can feed on that, you’ll have a lot of fun.” Arthur Ashe Stadium is noisy above all else, a rarity for a sport that was meant to be played in front of a hushed crowd. Its base level is louder than any of tennis’s other grand stages because of the number of people it can pack in, and quiet is never really quiet. It reaches a medium noise level when a night match bleeds into the early morning and people have been drinking in their seats all night, or are just loopy from the sun.Want to send the stadium tilting into a full-blown cacophony of sound? Try playing a tight match against an American after dark. The crowd can transform into the most fearsome, overwhelming opponent the U.S. Open has to offer. For and others who have won fans’ favor, it can be the difference between closing out a set and faltering.“Playing on Ashe, I don’t think there’s anything like it,” Coco Gauff said Friday, “especially when you win, like, a long rally.”Every one of Serena Williams’s opponents during her retirement run at last year’s U.S. Open spoke about the difficulty of contending with a crowd that exploded at every one of their faults and reached a defining pitch when Williams hit a winner. Anett Kontaveit, the second seed last year, shed tears about it during a news conference.at Arthur Ashe Stadium to Gauff and was in tears during her news conference afterward, as well. The German received a pair of time violations late in the match after she had been taking extra breaks between points, including on Gauff’s serve. Gauff didn’t approve, and neither did the crowd, which jeered at Siegemund each time she spoke to the umpire.But one trying match with the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd does not guarantee a lifetime of them. Love can be won, as Daniil Medvedev knows. The Russian captured the trophy here in 2021, is seeded third this year and is something of a crowd favorite after getting booed during multiple matches in 2019 for bratty behavior. He began encouraging the crowd’s jeers as the tournament wound on, embraced his role as a heel, and fake love bloomed into the real thing. Villains can be fun to root for, too, after all.“Every time I go on Ashe right now, I feel like the crowd is there for me. I honestly feel like New York loves me, and that’s very rare that I say something like this about the city,” Medvedev said this week, smiling. “... I would honestly say there are a lot of great courts, but especially night session is different to day session. Night session there is something, everyone says it, there is something special in U.S. Open.” Beyond the crowd’s feelings, the sheer rarity of that level of noise can challenge a player’s focus. The celebrities who dot the stands can be distracting — Justin Bieber earned a chorus of shrieks when he was shown on screen during Gauff’s match Friday night in between play. Iga Swiatek said her team once invited skier Lindsey Vonn, a regular U.S. Open attendee, to sit in her player box and purposefully didn’t tell Swiatek beforehand. For most Americans, being asked to entertain at Arthur Ashe Stadium is a high honor. Jennifer Brady, who lost to Caroline Wozniacki on Friday in the second match on the show court, said she let the stadium’s grandiosity overwhelm her in her first match there in 2017. Friday, she felt more like she belonged.Tommy Paul, the 14th seed this year, was surprised when he learned he was playing the first match of the day at the stadium. Paul’s best result at a Grand Slam tournament was the semifinals of the Australian Open this year, and he was the third-highest-ranked American man in contention on Friday alone, after Taylor Fritz and“I was kind of, like, ‘Really, they’re putting me on Ashe?’ I knew there was a pretty strong schedule of people. Novak is in my half, Fritz, ’Foe,” Paul said. “And we all know ’Foe likes prime time. Prime-time tennis on Ashe. … I was pretty excited, so it’s an honor to play on that court. Hopefully I’ll be back many more times.”
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