The Norwegian is not taking the possibility of legal highs in New York very well. “It’s like Snoop Dogg’s living room,” said Zverev two years ago.
Alexander Zverev touched on the subject delicately two years ago:
“Court 17 at Flushing Meadows smells like Snoop Dogg’s living room.” In New York, you can smell cannabis all the time, even during training sessions and US Open matches. His colleague Casper Ruud put it more formally than Zverev: “This smell is everywhere, even on the courts. It’s not my favorite smell, but we have to adapt. And it’s definitely the worst thing about the tournament.“

The 2022 law—  Smoking marijuana is legal at the US Open. The cause of the smell surrounding the courts of the fourth Grand Slam of the season can be traced back to a 2021 law that decriminalized the use of ”recreational” drugs in New York State. This means that joints can be smoked freely wherever tobacco can be used. The result is… mind-blowing. For everyone except Ruud, who is set to make his Slam debut tonight against Austria’s Ofner: “It’s annoying to play, get tired, and smell someone smoking marijuana a few meters away. There’s nothing we can do about it unless the law is changed. But I highly doubt that will happen.”

previous—  To tell the truth, it had already happened in the past that a tennis player complained about the “curiosity” of Flushing Meadows. Maria Sakkari, in 2021, tried to explain the direction in which the American public was heading. And with her, Swiss tennis player Rebeka Masarova: “Four years ago, I played on that court against Svitolina. You could already smell it, even though it didn’t affect me negatively.” Ruud (and Zverev before him) took it a little worse.