Cannabis wafting from Corona Park is becoming an unlikely fixture of US Open week, with British players again reporting that the smell drifts onto practice and outer courts, breaking concentration during one of tennis’s most demanding fortnights.
By Slice Powers / September 3, 2026
A Familiar Complaint Returns
Every August, the conversation around the US Open tends to center on seeding upsets, injury withdrawals, and the sport’s biggest names chasing history at Flushing Meadows. This year, though, one of the more persistent storylines has nothing to do with forehands or footwork. It is the smell of cannabis drifting over the outer courts, and it has players from multiple nations shaking their heads between points.
British number one Katie Boulter was among the first to raise the issue publicly ahead of her first-round match against American wildcard Carol Young Suh Lee. Speaking to the BBC, Boulter did not mince words about the effect it has had on her preparation.
“I’m not a huge fan of it,” Boulter said. “I know a lot of players have complained on some of the specific courts. 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.”
Geography Is the Culprit
The issue stems from the layout of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center itself. Unlike the compact, wall-enclosed grounds of Wimbledon or Roland Garros, Flushing Meadows was built broad and open to accommodate the largest crowds of any Grand Slam. The venue’s perimeter sits close to Corona Park, a heavily used public space separated from the practice courts by little more than a chain-link fence.
Cannabis is legal in New York for adults aged 21 and over, and while smoking is prohibited on tournament grounds, the USTA has no authority over what happens beyond its boundary. A western breeze is enough to carry the smell across Court 17 and the surrounding practice areas, and this is not a new phenomenon. The governing body says it works with local police and the parks department to manage the issue at the site boundary, though it has acknowledged the limits of what it can actually control.
“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 organisation said in a statement.
Not the First Time, and Not Just Boulter
The list of players who have raised the issue over the years is a notable one. Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev have both previously complained about the smell during their campaigns in New York, and this year they are joined by a wave of British players navigating the same distraction. Fran Jones and Harriet Dart, who both came through qualifying, say the smell has become something of a running joke on tour, even as it continues to be a genuine nuisance during matches.
Jones, whose main draw campaign opens against Poland’s Magda Linette, recalled making light of the situation during a previous visit to New York. “Last year I made a joke about that, in my first round, and I said to the guy, is this normal?” Jones said. “Because I was on the stadium, and it’s next to the park. He’s like, yeah, and I was like, well, no wonder I’m playing pretty well. This year I’ll be like, no, lock in, lock in.”
Dart, who beat fellow Briton Heather Watson in qualifying to set up a first-round meeting with America’s Peyton Stearns, took a more resigned view of the situation. “I mean it’s New York,” Dart said. “I feel like everywhere you walk around, it’s everywhere, no? It is what it is. Same for everyone.”
A History of On-Court Interruptions
This is not the first time the smell has directly affected play at Flushing Meadows. Back in 2022, Nick Kyrgios complained mid-match that a courtside spectator smoking was aggravating his asthma, prompting the umpire to intervene and ask nearby fans to stop. A year later, Greece’s Maria Sakkari flagged the smell to an umpire during a set, though she was careful afterward to clarify that it was not being offered as an excuse for her result on the day.
Taken together, these incidents point to a recurring structural issue rather than an isolated complaint. The tournament’s biggest names and its qualifiers alike appear to be dealing with the same distraction, year after year, without a clear fix in sight.
A Wider Conversation About Double Standards
The recurring complaints have also fed into a broader debate about how different substances are treated within the tournament’s own boundaries. The US Open generates significant revenue from alcohol sales, with the Honey Deuce cocktail serving as one of the event’s signature commercial products and a fixture of its marketing. Fans inside the grounds are free to drink heavily throughout the day, while the smell of a legal substance drifting in from outside the gates draws official statements of concern.
It is a contrast worth sitting with. Nobody is suggesting the USTA can police a public park it does not own, but the optics of promoting one substance while expressing discomfort over another are not lost on close observers of the tournament.
What Happens Next
For now, there is no firm fix on the table. City planners have floated the idea of a temporary no-smoking buffer zone around the venue’s perimeter during the two weeks of the tournament, but enforcement remains a significant hurdle given that the surrounding park is public land outside the USTA’s jurisdiction. Until a workable solution emerges, the smell of Corona Park looks set to remain an unofficial, if unwelcome, part of the Flushing Meadows experience.
Whether it genuinely affects results is impossible to say with any precision. But when multiple players across multiple years, from Grand Slam champions to first-time qualifiers, all describe the same distraction in almost identical terms, it stops being a quirky sideshow and starts looking like a legitimate quality-of-competition issue the tournament will eventually have to address.