Rain Delays and Scheduling Controversies at the US Open

Rain, tension and a storm over scheduling: Court 7 had all of it.

Kim Birrell stood at 3-3 in a second-set tiebreak against Petra Marcinko when the sky finally joined the contest. Umbrellas went up, players sat down, and the drama froze in place.

“Some rain drops coming down here, just to add to the drama,” Brenton Speed said on Nine, as the cameras lingered on two players trying to stay warm and locked in while everything around them slowed to a halt.

For Birrell, the stakes were brutally simple. She had to win that tiebreak to force a deciding set. No margin. No safety net. Jelena Dokic, watching on, summed up the cruelty of the pause.

“What a time to stop play here,” she said. “It’s tough for both players. If you play a couple of loose points here, the tiebreak is basically done.”

The match had already been moved forward on the schedule because of the wet weather forecast. The tournament knew the rain was coming. It came anyway.

On Arthur Ashe Stadium, Novak Djokovic’s match also felt the impact. Play stopped there too, but only briefly; the roof slid shut, the court dried, and the world No. 1 was soon back in motion. On the outside courts, there is no such luxury. Just towels, umbrellas and patience.

Tiley’s bold US Open overhaul under fire

While players waited out the rain, another storm gathered over the man now running this tournament.

Craig Tiley, the longtime Australian Open boss who only recently crossed the Pacific to take charge of the US Open, is already under heavy scrutiny in his debut edition. Just months into the job, he pushed through a significant change: stretching the first round over three days instead of two.

It is a model he knows well. Melbourne made the same shift years ago, starting on Sunday to ease the brutal early-round logjams that had matches finishing in the small hours of the morning. Tiley defended that move at the time as a necessary fix to protect players and fans from those marathon midnight sessions.

New York, though, is reacting differently.

Today, with thousands of fans on site and rain thinning the schedule, critics argue the extended first round has backfired. With the draw spread out and the weather cutting into play, there is less live tennis than the packed grounds deserve.

One voice, James Denman, captured the mood bluntly on social media: “the USTA seems to have genuinely f---ed the US Open. I know it’s always busy but this just reads... awful”.

Tiley, for his part, has made no secret of his ambition. At his Sunday press conference, he spoke about his dream of turning the US Open into “tennis Disneyland” — a sprawling, immersive experience where the event is as much about the spectacle as the sport. He has already increased prize money, a move that will land well in the locker room even as the schedule draws fire.

For now, though, the picture is stark. On Court 7, Birrell and Marcinko wait with umbrellas overhead, a tiebreak hanging in the balance. On Ashe, Djokovic plays under a closed roof. Outside, fans mill around a site that promised more tennis than the weather and the new format have so far delivered.

The rain will clear. The tiebreak will resume. The question for Tiley is whether the storm around his new-look US Open lingers a little longer.