FLUSHING, N.Y. — Tomas Martin Etcheverry spewed vomit mid-stride between points of his second-round match. Marta Kostyuk and Aryna Sabalenka applied bags of ice directly to their heads. Arthur Rinderknech aimed a tube of cool air directly at his junk.
"I was at some point very, very wet. The whole court was flooded from me," Alexander Zverev said after his match. Qinwen Zheng's second-round win was interrupted by a 10-minute break, due to the extreme heat. Grigor Dimitrov, counterintuitively, said after his victory that the heat made him focus more, because he wanted to minimize his time out there. The temperature in Queens hit a high of 95 degrees on Wednesday. It was challenging just to navigate the crowds at a leisurely pace or think two thoughts in a row, let alone return serve.
Bleachers on the outer courts that would have ordinarily been full lay vacant in patches. The line for the water fountains was 18 to 20 people deep whenever I walked by. Ushers abdicated their posts and sulked in the shade, vaping. One told me he was seven hours into a 10-hour shift and seemed as focused on hydrating as he was on his job. Insensate children flopped over on tables as their parents relaxed. Every T-shirt was spattered with Rorschach blots of sweat. Every face in the slow-moving crowd was squinting, grimacing, or slackening in some way.
Through it all, the boozing continued, with $15.50 beers and $23 cocktails coursing through loud, dehydrated bodies. A girl looked on as her mother, sitting down, was fanned from all angles by security, awaiting a medic. Feeling a little woozy myself, I stopped by one of several first aid centers for some electrolyte powder, and it was an active scene in there. Wheelchairs were being retrieved and dispatched all over the premises to pick up fainting fans. Shouting staffers carted big pallets, piled high with bags of ice, around the grounds.
At a few scattered stations away from the courts, 3-foot-wide oscillating fans blew air and mist at anyone fortunate enough to be standing in their paths. It was a smart idea, although there needed to be several thousand more of these to fully address the conditions. I was shocked to discover that each fan cost several thousand dollars. People had each paid several hundred dollars to watch tennis in these conditions, only to stand by the fans that cost several thousand dollars. I imagined damp wads of money moving around in one big circle of damp people.
It was so difficult to tear oneself away from these oases. One woman dressed in white told me she was going to stand there indefinitely, and that her husband would have to come get her. "We're all going to get Legionnaires' disease," said another, happily, thrusting her face into the cooling cloud. I remember that Frances Tiafoe brought 20 extra shirts to his first-round match; he left five sodden shirts on the court during his second-round win on Wednesday, which only lasted two sets before his opponent Alexander Shevchenko retired with an unspecified illness. Tiafoe's bench was a wreck—"like a little kid's room," as he put it. On a day like yesterday, all the fans should get to bring a change of clothes, too.
