Game…Set…Stoned?

    The U.S. Open tennis championship is slowly coming to a close. It is not hyperbole to say it is one of New York’s premier cultural events, attracting upscale crowds despite the controlled chaos of spectators at the United States Tennis Association (USTA) Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens. Let me state for the record that I am a huge tennis fan, as well as a low-rent recreational player. One of my dreams as a teenager was to play my dear friend, Ric Flagg (who was the Bjorn Borg of our high school tennis team; long flowing hair, and all) and try to at least win one game from him. I’m all in for the majors (Australian, French, Wimbledon, and the United States), and I try to catch as many of the bigger tour events throughout the year on The Tennis Channel. I have also been fortunate enough to attend the final weekend of the US Open a few times with a pass that would get me into a lot of the really cool social events. You know what I’m talking about...lots of senior citizens sitting around having a few cranberry and club sodas! Great, great times!

    Anyway, I read a piece the other day about this year’s Open. It seems that Norwegian pro Casper Ruud (a fine player in his own right) has complained about the pervasive and decidedly down-market smell of marijuana: “For me, this is the worst thing about New York. The smell is everywhere, even here on the courts…we have to accept it, but it’s not my favorite smell. It’s quite annoying to be playing, tired, and just meters away, someone is smoking marijuana.” My head almost snapped off my neck! Marijuana...in New York...at The Open! C’mon...!!

    Ruud is not the first to raise the issue. Several players, including Nick Kyrgios, Maria Sakkari, and Alexandr Zverev have complained about the ubiquitous weed smell. Zverev compared Court 17 in Flushing to “Snoop Dogg’s living room.” (Who says tennis players don’t have a sense of humor! What a great line!) And even tennis legend Novak Djokovic has added, “You can smell it everywhere, from practice to matches…I’m not a fan of that smell, actually that stench.”

    Ever since the West Side Tennis Club of Forest Hills prevailed over the forces of Newport, Rhode Island, in a contentious fight in 1915 to move The US Open Championship to The Big Apple, the event has attracted a well-heeled audience of celebrities and professionals from the country club set, as well as a cross section of enthusiasts from the general public...you know, dopes like me! Former mayor David Dinkins was a USTA board member who famously rerouted flights out of La Guardia Airport to avoid disrupting the matches. Alcohol is served at the Tennis Center, while smoking and vaping are barred, though staff members smell the weed just as the players do and are uncertain how to handle it. (“What do I do?” one asked. “I was not given direction.”) 

    Tennis functions in spite of the proximity of fans to the playing surface. The arrangement works partly because spectators are generally well behaved and even respond to verbal rebukes from umpires or a stern “quiet, please” over the intercom in the United States and England or “silence, s’il vous plait” in Paris. (How was that for 3 years of high school French!) The noise and sometimes-raucous New York crowds are special challenges of this major tournament for players, but marijuana smoke is another matter.

    New York City residents are well aware of the constant aroma of pot throughout the city. Since the drug was legalized for recreational use in 2021, users have begun openly smoking in public, in ways that most cigarette smokers were conditioned out of years ago, when smoking in public places was banned. Though the move met some initial opposition, it proved successful largely because people complained about being forced to consume air polluted by others. Plus, everyone soon noticed that smoke-free environments are more pleasant.

    Unlike nicotine smokers, who usually concede that their habit may be unpleasant to others, it seems pot smokers react with indignation to any suggestion that they keep theirs to themselves. Popular culture invariably treats pot smoking as amusing and harmless to everyone, even the users. However, that is not the reality on the ground. Disorder compounds, and it’s no coincidence that notorious areas of civic breakdown like San Francisco’s Tenderloin District or Los Angeles’ Skid Row sit in a haze of marijuana smoke, an essential ingredient in the miasma of despair and hopelessness of these places, like these cities are the real-life embodiment of the Peanuts character, Pigpen! Yet the smell is not confined to such areas: the decriminalization and normalization of public consumption of cannabis means that one encounters its odor everywhere from suburban grocery store parking lots to leafy bedroom communities.

    In old photos of Madison Square Garden or the old Spectrum in South Philly, the layer of smoke from cigarettes and cigars hovers about musicians playing precision wind instruments or boxers gasping for oxygen in the ring. It makes for great atmospheric imagery, but the modern viewer marvels at how such a thing was ever permitted. Cigarette smoking is still legal today, of course. You just don’t smell it everywhere.

    Look, I’m not the morality police here, trying to go all weed prohibition on anyone. Personally, I have never even held a joint in my hand and I am not going to start now, so what do I know. You want to light up while listening to the great Little Feat song “Don't Bogart That Joint”, have at it. In arguing to legalize marijuana consumption, pot smokers asked for the right to be left alone to enjoy the drug in peace. No problem. But on the other hand, many seem not to have grasped their obligation to those with whom they share public air. We are all subjected to their habit, whether we like it or not—even if we’re trying to return a 75 mph forehand. 

    So if I find out that my main man, Carlos Alcaraz, doesn’t win this year’s Open because he found himself stoned from second-hand smoke midway through the fifth set against Jannik Sinner...I will not be a happy man! Now, I think I’ll pour myself a glass of wine. And smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Cheers, everyone!

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com