After winning her second-round match against Katerina Siniakova, Naomi Osaka addressed the elephant in the room, something that has now happened twice in a row during her matches at Flushing Meadows. Again, during the match, the chair umpire had to request the crowd to “remain quiet”, and Osaka was in a position to address the matter openly when the questioning focused on the USTA’s rising social media influencers policy at the tournament. 

“I think obviously 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,” she said during the post-match press conference. “I feel like it could be a good thing for people to make the sport of tennis popular to their specific audience, but I think it has to be managed a lot better, especially in a situation like my first-round match.”

“But yeah, overall I think there’s huge positives, and I’m not the one to say you don’t want people to continue to grow the sport. I just think it has to be in a way that everyone knows the rules and the etiquette.”

The first-round incident she referenced was the more disruptive of the two. Osaka was up against Anastasia Zakharova and the game was tied at deuce in the fourth game of the second set when chair umpire Kader Nouni had to interfere. He had to completely stop play and address a group in the hospitality suite who had arranged a complete photoshoot with ring lights, which were clearly distracting the players. 

“Guys, please, in the suite behind me, thank you guys, please take your seat,” Nouni said. Osaka fluffed her toss on the next point but still closed out the match in straight sets.

She is not the only player to flag this problem about the tournament’s atmosphere. The 38-year-old Frenchman, Adrian Mannarino, recently addressed the atmosphere of the crowd at the US Open this year and called it “a zoo,” pointing to the free movement of fans during points, which he feels is a complete line cross at a competitive level. 

The USTA has defended its approach throughout. Spokesperson Brendan McIntyre said such disruptions were rare and that umpires can intervene “similar to when crowd noise reaches a certain level.” The tournament has reportedly allowed access to some 100 influencers this year to create content on its behalf. 

Osaka has previously called the US Open a “stage” with a special kind of energy, a sentiment plenty of her peers share. Her point was simple and direct: growth is welcome, but there should be a certain etiquette of the sport that needs to be followed, especially when they are sitting courtside during a Grand Slam. For ages, tennis has been the sport that has a lot of rules, even for the spectators in the stadium, unlike football or basketball or any other sport. 

Those stricter rules are still followed at Grand Slams like Wimbledon and the French Open, where no one talks or even moves during a point, and the entire stadium is locked onto the ball, which is going to and fro. Every thud of the ball is heard clearly, with the squeaking noise of the shoes and the grunting voices of players, which is proving to be untrue day by day at the US Open. 

Meanwhile, Osaka moves to face 20th seed Elise Mertens for the tenth time in a rivalry stretching back to 2017, where she has defeated her six times. The Japanese star had a bit of a slip-up during the second set, but the third set removed all the doubts, as the final scoreline read 6-2, 5-7, 6-1.