‘Hash court’ and high drama: how weed became the US Open’s new distraction

One player has likened Court 17, the bullring-like stadium at the southwest corner of the US Open grounds, to ‘Snoop Dogg’s living room’ due to the smell of marijuana. USTA officials say the smoke likely drifts in from Corona Park. Photograph: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

The US Open has always been the unruliest of tennis’s four grand slam tournaments, a place where the soundtrack is as much screeching trains, the roar of air traffic overhead and well-lubricated crowds as it is the thwack of racket on ball. Frances Tiafoe likes to call it “organized chaos”, the sort of life-affirming atmosphere that he says teases out his best performances. For some, it’s no stage at all but a blur of bass-heavy changeovers, revolving-door celebrity cameos and the ceaseless rattle of the nearby No 7 subway.

In recent years, though, one distraction has cut through even the normalized bedlam that gives the tournament its character. Alongside the honey deuce cocktails and free-flowing Heineken, a different vice has threaded itself into the fortnight: the pungent and unmistakable odor of marijuana. It drifts across the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center with enough frequency that players have begun treating it as not a bug but a feature of the event itself.