This year’s US Open keeps circling back to the same storyline: the crowd’s behavior and people running out of patience with it. A fan put it bluntly in a September 6 post on X, listing a pattern that goes way past normal tournament noise.
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“The bad behavior at the US Open is getting embarrassing,” their X post reads. “Booing, heckling, shouting during points, marijuana, influencers, telling a player to go back home to Russia, disrespecting players, it’s not ‘passion,’ it’s a lack of class. If you can’t respect the players or the game, you don’t belong in the stands.”
This Sunday, the Louis Armstrong Stadium crowd chanted “Kick them out” after two hecklers repeatedly targeted Jakub Mensik, stopping play in the fourth set. Security escorted one fan out while another left on his own.
The heckling, as mentioned in the X post, wasn’t limited to one match. Benjamin Bonzi described repeatedly stepping up to serve against Daniil Medvedev only to back off because of booing.
“Every time I went on the line to serve, everyone was booing,” said Bonzi, per Chuck Schilken of the Los Angeles Times.
The smell of w*** around the grounds added one more layer, with world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka and Britain’s Katie Boulter both raising it as a distraction during their matches.
Then there’s the influencer problem. As four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka called out the trend directly after her second-round win, following two separate disruptions.
“If you come to a sporting event, you have to respect the sport. And I feel like it’s common courtesy to read up on the sport, especially the etiquette,” Osaka said, per David Waldstein of the New York Times.
All in all, various fans have reflected on this reality and given their two cents about this issue.
Fans on X pile on over US Open crowd behavior
Within the comment section of the same tennis fan’s X post, several of the fans showed their perceptions and reacted to the crowd’s behavior.
“US Open audiences have been the worst for many years. Always trying to make themselves part of the story,” a fan wrote.
That sentiment lines up with years of complaints about Flushing Meadows crowds being louder and more self-involved than other majors.
“Yes. Truly disgusting,” another fan commented, clearly in agreement.
This wasn’t an incident limited to this year. In the past, such as the 2023 and 2025 tournaments, columnists have highlighted the fan behavior during the US Open.
“Whoever said there was a lot of class down there?” a comment read.
That reply took a sarcastic aim at the idea that any of this counts as passion rather than plain rudeness.
“Never should be tolerated. Never this behavior at Wimbledon,” a fan wrote.
The Wimbledon comparison came up more than once, with fans drawing a hard line between what’s tolerated at the All England Club and what’s become normal in New York.
“I agree. I think the ‘Influencers’ have a lot to do with it. Americans don’t need to be stoic like at Wimbledon because that is not the country’s persona, but show a little decorum,” another fan reacted.
For a tournament that prides itself on energy and star power, the bigger question now is whether that energy has curdled into something the sport can’t easily recover from.