Noise from roof annoys players
NEW YORK — When heavy rain began pelting the closed roof at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Andy Murray couldn’t pick up the usual sounds of a tennis match.
U.S. OPEN
Most important, he said, the thwack of a ball coming off his opponent’s racket strings — or his own, for that matter — was completely indiscernible during a 6-4, 6-1, 6-4 second-round victory over Marcel Granollers at the U.S. Open on Thursday.
As it is, the new $150 million retractable cover makes the tournament’s main stadium louder because the structure, even when open, traps the sounds of spectators chatting in the stands.
When it’s shut, as was the case Wednesday because of showers that delayed play on other courts for hours at a time, the roof amplifies all of that ambient noise.
And when the drops came down early in Murray’s second set, well, it was loud as can be.
“You can’t hear anything, really,” 2012 U.S. Open champion Murray said. “I mean, you could hear the line calls.” But that was about it. As Murray and Granollers played, there was a constant din during points, an amalgam of the downpour bouncing off the outside of the roof and the murmur of the crowd bouncing off the inside. From a seat in the 10th row parallel to a baseline, the racket-ball impact was rendered silent by a louder version of what you hear when you hold a seashell to your ear.
It’s not simply that it’s an unfamiliar soundtrack for a Grand Slam match. It affects the competition.
“We use our ears when we play. It’s not just the eyes. (The sound) helps us pick up the speed of the ball, the spin that’s on the ball, how hard someone’s hitting it. If we played with our ears covered or with headphones on, it would be a big advantage if your opponent wasn’t wearing them,” said Murray, whose next opponent is 40th-ranked Paolo Lorenzi. “It’s tricky. You can still do it, but it’s harder, for sure.”
The good news: At least Murray, Granollers and others were able to play. Rain has often been a schedule-wrecker at the U.S. Open, where the men’s final was postponed five consecutive years from 2008-12.
Because of Thursday’s wet weather, action around the grounds was limited until the ear- ly evening — but matches kept coming under the roof in Ashe, including Serena Williams’ 6-3, 6-3 victory over American wildcard entry Vania King at night. That pulled Williams even with Martina Navratilova’s Open-era record of 306 Grand Slam match wins; only Roger Federer, with 307, owns more.
Men advancing included 2009 champion Juan Martin del Potro, No. 3 Stan Wawrinka, No. 6 Kei Nishikori, No. 8 Dominic Thiem, No. 14 Nick Kyrgios and No. 22 Grigor Dimitrov.
Williams’ older sister, seven-time major champion Venus, beat Julia Goerges 6-2, 6-3. 2011 U.S. Open winner Sam Stosur lost 6-3, 6-3 to Zhang Shuai of China, and No. 5 Simona Halep eliminated Lucie Safarova 6-3, 6-4 in a meeting between past French Open finalists that was the first contest played entirely with the roof closed.