Five men’s players retired from their matches at the US Open due to the heat on Tuesday, leading to calls from some players for changes that would make it safer to play in extreme temperatures.
The temperatures were well over 90 in New York on both Tuesday and Wednesday, and the combination of the humidity and the hard courts at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center meant it may have felt as hot as 120 degrees to the competitors during matches.
Players: Short Breaks Not Enough
Those conditions caused the USTA to implement an extreme heat policy on Tuesday for the first time in the tournament’s history. The rule allowed men’s players to take a 10-minute break between the third and fourth sets if either players requested one. The WTA Tour has used similar rules for women’s matches since 1992, in which either player can request a similar short break after the second set.
But despite the brief relief offered to players, it wasn’t enough to stop a rash of retirements as matches went into the later sets.
One player who quit was Leonardo Mayer, who gave in during the fourth set of his match against Laslo Dere.
“Ten minutes? I would have needed an hour and a half,” Mayer said in Spanish after the match ended.
The Argentinian suggested that reducing the length of the matches might be the only way to prevent injuries or worse from occurring in extreme environments.
“I think we should no longer play five sets,” he told reporters. “That’s my opinion, I think that’s the past. They won’t stop until someone dies.”
French player Julien Benneteau, who won his first-round match, said that the matches should have been halted during the hottest part of the day rather than risk the health of the players.
“They were lucky they only had retirements,” Benneteau said after his match.
Even some of the top players in the world commented on the conditions. During his first round match against Marton Fucsovics, Novak Djokovic asked for a trash can on court during the second set because he felt he might become ill. When the two men took advantage of the 10-minute break after the third set, they shared an unusual moment in the locker room.
“Marton and I had the ice baths, one next to the other,” Djokovic shared after the match. “So we were in the two ice baths, we were naked in the ice baths and it was quite a wonderful feeling, you know. Battling with a guy for two and a half hours and then you get into the locker room and you haven’t finished the match and you’re naked in the ice baths.”
Alize Cornet Shirt Change Controversy
The heat also resulted in a controversy over sexism, though one that officials were quick to resolve after seeing what occurred.
French player Alize Cornet briefly took off her top after realizing she had put it on backwards during the heat break before the third set of her match with Johanna Larsson. Cornet was shocked to find that she was issued a code violation for doing so, with many noting that men’s players regularly change their shirts on court.
The WTA criticized the decision, and the USTA lated admitted that the situation had been handled poorly.
“We regret that a Code Violation was assessed to Ms. Cornet yesterday,” the USTA said in a statement sent to CNN. “We have clarified the policy to ensure this will not happen moving forward. Fortunately, she was only assessed a warning with no further penalty or fine.”