Aryna Sabalenka Addresses Cannabis Smell During US Open Match

Aryna Sabalenka has faced down big servers, hostile crowds and suffocating pressure on the sport’s biggest stages. On Friday in New York, the world No 1 found herself battling something else entirely: a cloud of cannabis drifting across Louis Armstrong Stadium.

She had opened her US Open third-round match against Uzbekistan’s Kamilla Rakhimova in the kind of mood that usually spells trouble for opponents, racing into a 3-0 lead and tightening her grip on the contest. Then, during her second service game, she paused. Racquet in hand, Sabalenka turned toward the chair.

“Someone is smoking weed,” she told umpire Eva Asderaki-Moore at 30-0, gesturing toward the stands. “Would you mind to… because it’s so strong.”

Play stopped briefly as the situation was noted, the smell hanging in the air before the match rolled on. Sabalenka, unfazed on the scoreboard if not in the nostrils, closed out a straight-sets victory, her power game largely untouched by the distraction.

The incident, though, struck a familiar nerve at Flushing Meadows. The odour of cannabis has become a recurring, if unwanted, backdrop at the US Open, with players in recent years complaining about the haze that sometimes drifts in from the surrounding parkland. Smoking is not allowed inside the grounds, but recreational cannabis is legal in New York for adults 21 and over, and the open layout around the tennis complex leaves the stadiums exposed to whatever is burning nearby.

Sabalenka said later she had caught whiffs of it earlier in the tournament, but never like this, never right in the middle of a match with the wind funnelling the smell into the bowl of Louis Armstrong.

“That strong, yeah. Also, because it was a bit windy,” she explained. “I don’t know if it was coming from the crowd or was from the outside because the wind blows it into the stadium.”

There was no moral crusade in her voice, only a plea for common sense.

“I was like, Guys, you can do whatever, you can smoke whatever, you can relax as much as you can, but please to not do it around the tennis courts,” she said with a smile. “It’s a bit tricky to handle that smell while you’re trying to compete at your best.”

She underlined the point once more, half exasperated, half amused, as the questions kept circling back to the same subject.

“I just hope they are a bit more aware of that stuff,” Sabalenka said, before cutting off the weed talk with a laugh. “Come on, guys. I think there is nothing else to say about weed. I’m just asking people not to smoke it next to the tennis court.”

On a night when her tennis looked sharp and controlled, it was the breeze, not the opponent, that proved the most awkward thing to manage.