Arthur Ashe Stadium: The U.S. Open's Unique Atmosphere

Arthur Ashe Stadium doesn’t wait for silence. It never has.

The U.S. Open’s vast main court, the biggest tennis-specific arena on the planet, hums and crackles from the moment the gates open. Where Wimbledon’s Centre Court and Roland Garros’s Court Philippe-Chatrier settle into a church-like hush before the first serve, Ashe offers players something very different: a constant, restless soundtrack.

“On Arthur Ashe Stadium, there’s always ambient noise,” says Félix Auger-Aliassime, a two-time semifinalist in New York. “The brain just gets used to it after a while. There’s no other way to put it. There’s no preparation for that. All the players, they step on the court, they try to play their game, they try to focus with their tools and with their preparation. But everybody’s got their way of going about it.”

Some courts demand reverence. Ashe demands personality.

Frances Tiafoe, who has ridden those New York nights like a wave, doesn’t bother dressing it up. “New York—it’s different,” he says. “Night on Ashe is so special. It’s the biggest court in tennis. The atmosphere is wild.” Naomi Osaka, a two-time champion here, calls it a “stage” and insists the U.S. Open “makes stars” because of that particular electricity.

The tournament has stopped pretending it’s anything else. It has leaned into the chaos.

Last year, American Emma Navarro summed it up with two words: “casually rowdy.” She contrasted it with Wimbledon’s “proper,” “elegant,” and “respectful” tone. That contrast is no accident. Organizers have been quietly—and loudly—reshaping what tennis is supposed to sound like.

In 2024, they pushed again. The U.S. Open relaxed long-standing rules about when fans could move in and out of their seats, wrapping it in a new phrase: “fan free movement.” Tournament referee Jake Garner defended the change at the time. He called it potentially “radical” for tennis, but questioned why making the fan experience more enjoyable should be seen that way at all.

For a sport that grew up in the manicured gardens of the British upper class, it’s a sharp turn. Tennis etiquette was built on restraint. Spectators stayed still. They stayed quiet. Players, aside from the occasional grunt, did the same.

“There has been a tradition of allowing players to concentrate,” says Lizzie Post, great-great-granddaughter of etiquette icon Emily Post and co-host of the “Awesome Etiquette” podcast. Tennis, she points out, came out of the British aristocracy in the late 19th century and absorbed its codes. Robert Lake, a historian of the sport, notes that traditional tennis etiquette is “definitely rooted in ideas of class that permeated the sport when it first emerged in the late 1800s.”

But tradition and necessity are not the same thing.

“Tennis causes problems for itself when it is clutching its pearls and being precious,” says veteran reporter Matthew Futterman, who covers the sport for The Athletic. He asks the obvious question: how do you get a child excited about live tennis if the first rule is to sit still and be quiet for three hours? “That sounds like a punishment to me,” he says.

The live experience doesn’t resemble a typical game in football, basketball, or soccer. There’s no single kickoff or tip-off that everyone builds toward. A day at the U.S. Open is a sprawl. Fans drift between outer courts, practice courts, food stands and bars, dropping into matches and leaving again. “Tennis, you’re sort of wandering around, you’re in your seat for a while, you watch the match, but a lot of it is about everything else,” Futterman says. In the early rounds, a fan can see a dozen matches without ever sitting through a full one.

That’s where the Open has found its edge. “The brilliance of the U.S. Open,” Futterman says, is recognizing that the event is at its best when it feels like “an outdoor festival party going on with music and great food and all those things—and there happens to also be some tennis which you want to enjoy as well.”

The USTA embraces that identity. Nicole Kankam, the organization’s Managing Director of Pro Tennis Marketing and Entertainment, sees the event as a mirror of its host city. “Everything that people associate with New York—the passion and the energy and the excitement—feels very much endemic to the U.S. Open itself,” she says. “It’s loud, it’s tough, it’s hot, but it’s also everything that makes it great and exciting.”

That blend has turned the Open into something bigger than a tennis tournament. Simone Scott, a journalist who runs “The Girls’ Guide to Sports” series on social media, describes the event as a crossroads of sport, style, and culture. She believes that mix makes it less intimidating for people who don’t see themselves as hardcore tennis fans. “I love how the U.S. Open brings together so many different worlds. It’s very New York,” says Scott, who is working with Dove during this year’s Open. “You have incredible athletes competing at the highest level, but you also have fashion, culture, entertainment, and fans from every background all coming together in one place. It feels vibrant, welcoming, and inspiring, and there's really nothing else quite like it.”

That word—accessible—sits at the center of the USTA’s strategy. Kankam frames it as part of the governing body’s core mission: grow the sport. “Audiences and fan expectations change and evolve,” she says. “We can maintain some traditions that are at our core, but if we’re not open to evolution and meeting fans where they are, then you miss out on growing your audience.”

So the Open keeps testing new ways in. One of the biggest recent hits came last year, when the tournament launched Finals Fan Fest, a grounds-pass option for people without stadium tickets to watch the title matches from parties on site. The numbers were striking. According to Kankam, 85% of those who bought Finals Fan Fest grounds passes were completely new to the U.S. Open. For the after party, that figure climbed to 95%.

Not everyone is cheering the evolution.

Jessica Schiffer, founder of the tennis platform Hard Court, calls the change healthy for a sport that has “been very stuffy and uptight for too long” and needs to “get with the times and make it a little easier for people to enjoy.” At the same time, she admits she’s “a purist at heart” who loves the “peace and quiet that many tennis matches come with.”

That tension runs through the grounds in Queens. Most critics aren’t asking for Wimbledon-style silence. Their frustration is less about volume and more about visibility.

Brand strategist Heather Queiroz, who attended last year’s Open with her family, didn’t object to the sound. What bothered her was the constant movement. People standing during points. Crowds clustering in the aisles. Arguments breaking out because someone’s view vanished just as a rally heated up. “We found ourselves in a lot of weird interactions and arguments with other people because they would just be standing [during points] or just standing in the aisles and then you can’t see,” she says. “What makes tennis so unique is that it’s a very precise sport. If you were going to watch the match, you kind of need to watch it.”

Her concern runs deeper than one bad night. She worries the atmosphere is being built around people who aren’t really there for the tennis. “Short-term, you can erode your loyal fan base, but long-term it doesn’t play out,” she says. “The more OG fans are definitely frustrated—and then with the prices going up, it makes you not really want to go because if you end up not really being able to see the match very well, then you might as well just watch it on TV and at least be able to see good tennis.”

She has a simple fix in mind: teach people the basics. Put signs around the grounds explaining when to move, when to sit, when to hold off on that selfie. Post agrees. She suggests tickets could arrive with a short guide to expected behavior. “You do want to make sure spectators know what the experience is supposed to be and what the decorum is for it,” she says. That responsibility, she adds, sits with the tournament itself—those who print the tickets, write the rules, and train the ushers. They decide what kind of event they’re staging and how clearly they communicate that to the crowd.

For Post, etiquette isn’t about snobbery. It’s about awareness. “Etiquette,” she says, is “thinking about our impact on the people around us and how we can make that a positive one and not a negative one. It doesn’t take much.” At the heart of the U.S. Open, she reminds, is still tennis: “two competitors playing at their best and trying to be their best. They train all year, every day. Their whole life, their livelihood, is based on this. You don’t want to be the lone voice that’s really loud in a quieter place.”

That’s the tightrope in Queens now. A tournament that wants to sound like New York, feel like a festival, and still honor the precision and intensity on court.

One thing, as Futterman puts it, is beyond debate: “It’s not your British grandmother’s tennis tournament.” The question is whether the sport is ready to accept that the future of tennis might sound a lot more like Ashe on a hot New York night.