Frances Tiafoe, 28, ranked 12th in the world, plays his third US Open semi-final on Friday, against Ben Shelton. Asked about the match beforehand, he talked about the crowd more than about his opponent.
“I’m arguing for tennis to move with the times and let spectators talk, move, take part more. We should draw on the energy of basketball or football,” he said.
That is when the intern put his hand up.
Silly question, but who decided we all had to be quiet? I asked four people in the newsroom. I got tradition, etiquette, respect for the players’ concentration, and “it’s always been like that”. Four answers, no name, no date. I checked, and actually nobody knows. In basketball, people scream through free throws and nobody calls it the end of civilisation. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
The setting is rather on Tiafoe’s side: Arthur Ashe Stadium holds 23,000 spectators, and the semi-final will be played there. Twenty-three thousand people asked to keep quiet between serves is the sort of arithmetic that has been keeping Maxime busy since Tuesday.
The match also carries a weight Tiafoe described himself. For the first time in the Open era, two Black American men meet in a Grand Slam semi-final. “It’s great to have two people of colour facing each other. Obviously, it’s a historic moment,” he said. The winner will be the first Black American man in a US Open final since Arthur Ashe in 1972.
Roland, asked about the noise question, answered in one line.
In my day the crowd kept quiet, and nobody asked who had decided it. Well. It’s the times.
Tiafoe comes into the semi-final after a 4hr 38min quarter-final against Alex Michelsen, won in five sets from two sets down. Shelton knocked out Carlos Alcaraz in a match that finished at 3.33am, the latest in US Open history. And he leads their head-to-head 3-1.
It’s true, we checked: DH Les Sports+.
