NEW YORK—Holger Rune kept hearing a female fan in the Court 5 bleachers making noise as he tried to play on Monday.
“All the time, all the time,” the 20-year-old Dane told the chair umpire and referee, before complaining, in an exasperated voice, “You’re not taking care of it!”
This was early in the fourth set of his first-round match with Roberto Carballes Baena, and time was rapidly running out on Rune’s final Slam campaign of 2023. As the No. 4 seed, he was annoyed about being scheduled on this small, noisy, distraction-filled court to begin with. In his mind, it was so far off the beaten path that he felt the need to tweet out a map of the US Open grounds to help his fans find it. The sarcasm in the message wasn’t hard to pick up.