The U.S. Open Is Rewriting the Rules of Tennis Etiquette

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Arthur Ashe Stadium never gets quiet. Opened in 1997, the U.S. Open’s marquee stadium—the largest tennis-specific venue in the world—doesn’t abide by the normal tennis etiquette rules. While a hush descends on Wimbledon’s Centre Court or Roland Garros’s Court Philippe-Chartier before play begins, the best that athletes can hope on Ashe for is a low hum.

“On Arthur Ashe Stadium, there’s always ambient noise,” says Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime, who has reached the semifinals at the tournament twice. “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.”

Most top players have nothing but praise for the atmosphere. “New York—it’s different,” Frances Tiafoe says. “Night on Ashe is so special. It’s the biggest court in tennis. The atmosphere is wild.” Naomi Osaka, a two-time winner in New York, echoes that sentiment, telling T&C that Ashe is a “stage.” She says, “The U.S. Open makes stars and there’s just a special type of energy there.”

The U.S. Open, in recent years, has leaned into the noise. “Casually rowdy” is how American player Emma Navarro described the tournament last year, comparing it to the “proper,” “elegant,” and “respectful” vibe at Wimbledon. The vibe shift is an intentional one from tournament organizers. In 2024, the U.S. Open relaxed longstanding restrictions on when spectators could move to and from their seats, calling it a “fan free movement” policy. “It might be seen as a radical thing for tennis,” tournament referee Jake Garner told at the time, “but I’m not sure trying to increase the fan experience and making it more enjoyable for them should be that radical.”

The U.S. Open is quietly—er, loudly—leading the way in rewriting tennis etiquette. Historically, the sport was quiet. Spectators were expected to be quiet. Players, with the exception of their grunts, are quiet. “There has been a tradition of allowing players to concentrate,” says Lizzie Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post and co-host of the Awesome Etiquette podcast. Tennis, which emerged as a pastime of the British aristocracy in the late 19th century, inherited many of the social conventions of that world—including an emphasis on decorum and restraint. “You can’t separate the sport from the people who played it,” says Robert Lake, a historian who authored . Traditional tennis etiquette, he tells T&C, “is definitely rooted in ideas of class that permeated the sport when it first emerged in the late 1800s.”

But a quiet atmosphere, while traditional, is not necessary. “Tennis causes problems for itself when it is clutching its pearls and being precious,” says veteran sports journalist Matthew Futterman, who covers tennis for The Athletic and is the author of . “How in the world are you supposed to get a kid excited about going to a tennis match—and being quiet—when you bring an eight-year-old into a stadium and you say, sit still and be quiet for the next three hours? That sounds like a punishment to me.”

Attending tennis tournaments like the U.S. Open are unlike any other sporting event. Instead of a defined start and end to a game, like in football, basketball, or soccer, fans flit between multiple matches, and spend a full day (or a full evening) on site. “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,” says Futterman. Indeed, in the early rounds of the tournament, attendees could see over a dozen matches a day.

“The brilliance of the U.S. Open,” he continues, is that the tournament realized “tennis is at its best when it feels like there’s 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 is proud of the atmosphere they’re fostering. “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,” says Nicole Kankam, the Managing Director, Pro Tennis Marketing and Entertainment for the USTA. “It’s loud, it’s tough, it’s hot, but it’s also everything that makes it great and exciting.”

Simone Scott, a journalist who frequently shares “The Girls’ Guide to Sports,” a series aimed at creating an online sports community for women and “ensuring girls feel comfortable showing up as themselves in every space they enter,” on her social media accounts, says the U.S. Open sits at a unique intersection of sport, style, and culture. That combination, she says, is precisely what makes the tournament feel accessible to people who may not consider themselves 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 this 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.”

The tournament’s emphasis on accessibility—and bringing in a wider fanbase—ties back to the USTA’s mission, Kankam says, to continuously 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.”

One way the tournament continues to evolve: They are set to expand which launched last year, which allows people without tickets to the finals watch the matches from parties on the grounds. “85% of people that bought Finals Fan Fest grounds passes were net new fans to the U.S. Open,” Kankam says, and “95% of ticket buyers for the after party last year were net new to our audience.”

The changing U.S. Open atmosphere is good for the sport, says Jessica Schiffer, founder of Hard Court. “Tennis has been very stuffy and uptight for too long, and we need to get with the times and make it a little easier for people to enjoy the sport. That being said, I’m also a purist at heart and I love the peace and quiet that many tennis matches come with.”

The distinction is important: Making it easier for people to enjoy the sport, while not losing the essentials. Even some of the U.S. Open’s critics are not asking for Wimbledon-level silence. Their complaint is less about noise than about whether the noise—and the movement that comes with it—makes it harder to watch the tennis. For example, brand strategist Heather Queiroz doesn’t mind the noise, but what bothered her and her family the most at last year’s U.S. Open was the movement in the stands. “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 tells T&C. “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.”

She worries that the changing atmosphere is catering to people who aren’t necessarily tennis fans. “Short-term, you can erode your loyal fan base, but long-term it doesn’t play out,” Queiroz 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.”

A solution, Queiroz suggests, would be placing sinage around the grounds educating newer fans on tennis etiquette. Lizzie Post, too, says perhaps tickets should come with a brief guide on expected behavior. “You do want to make sure spectators know what the experience is supposed to be and what the decorum is for it,” says Post. “That’s in the hands of the people issuing the tickets and the ushers who are meant to help crowd control. It’s a lot on the establishments that host these events to determine the type of event they’re going to be throwing and make the atmosphere known.”

Etiquette, Post 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 is tennis; it is “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,” says Post.

One thing’s for certain, as Futterman notes: “It’s not your British grandmother’s tennis tournament.”

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