British Players React to New York's Unique Challenge at US Open

The grass is gone, but the smell lingers. Britain’s US Open contenders have swapped Wimbledon’s lawns for New York’s hard courts, only to find a different kind of “grass” hanging in the air around Flushing Meadows.

With marijuana legal for adults in New York, the nearby Corona Park has become an unlikely sideshow to the year’s final major. Smoking is banned inside the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, yet the scent drifts over the outer courts, and British players are far from impressed.

Katie Boulter, the British No 1, has already had enough of it.

“You go down to the practice courts and down in the park courts, you do smell it a lot,” she said. “I’ve played on one before and I did smell it during my match. It’s something that I wouldn’t like to smell in the middle of my match. I’m trying to focus and then obviously, it takes you out of the moment and you really don’t want to. You don’t need distractions.”

Her verdict was blunt: “I’m not a huge fan of it.”

Boulter is not alone. Fran Jones, Britain’s No 3, remembered her first real encounter with the haze at last year’s tournament, when she played on a court backing directly onto the park.

“Last year I made a joke about that, in my first round, and I said to the guy: ‘Is this normal?’” she recalled. “Because I was on the stadium, and it’s next to the park. He’s like: ‘Yeah’. And I was: ‘Well, no wonder I’m playing pretty well’.”

The joke lands easily, but Jones knows the stakes are higher this time. “This year I’ll be like: ‘No, lock in, lock in!’”

Harriet Dart, who joined Jones in battling through qualifying, took a more resigned view. For her, this is simply New York being New York.

“I mean it’s New York. It’s New York,” she said. “I feel like everywhere you walk around, it’s everywhere, no? It is what it is. Same for everyone.”

The USTA, for its part, stressed the limits of its control, noting in a statement: “While we can’t control what takes place off the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, we continue to be vigilant as we maintain this.”

The message is clear: they can patrol their own fences. Beyond them, the city breathes as it always has.

Fery handed first ATP final shot after Duckworth injury

While the British women navigate the New York haze, Arthur Fery is cutting through clearer air in North Carolina.

The 21-year-old has reached the first ATP Tour final of his career at the Winston-Salem Open, though not in the way he would have imagined. His semi-final against James Duckworth ended abruptly when the Australian retired with a right leg injury.

Fery led 6-4, 1-2 at the time. He had seized control late in the opening set, breaking at 4-4, and the second set had stayed on serve until Duckworth called it quits.

It still goes down as a landmark moment. A first tour final. A new kind of pressure.

Waiting for him in Saturday’s final is Ignacio Buse, the rising Peruvian who ground past France’s Benjamin Bonzi 6-2, 4-6, 6-1. On paper, there is almost nothing between them: Buse sits at No 36 in the world, one place above Fery, and will arrive at the upcoming French Open as the 32nd seed.

The margins are thin, the opportunity anything but. For Fery, this is the kind of week that can tilt a season.