World number one Aryna Sabalenka had an \u2060unusual interruption during her US Open third-round match on Friday, stopping play to alert the umpire to a strong smell of cannabis drifting onto Louis Armstrong Stadium.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, who had made a fast 3-0 start \u200cagainst Uzbekistan’s Kamilla \u2060Rakhimova, raised the issue during her second service game, pointing out the smell before play resumed.<\/p>\n
The odour of cannabis has become a familiar, if \u200cunwelcome, feature at Flushing Meadows, with players complaining about the \u2060distraction in the past.<\/p>\n
While smoking is \u200cnot permitted inside the tournament grounds, recreational \u2060cannabis \u200cis legal for adults over 21 in New York, and smoke from people in the surrounding \u2060Flushing Meadows-Corona Park can drift into the tennis \u2060complex and onto the courts.<\/p>\n
Even top seed Sabalenka was unable to escape one of the more unexpected elements of the US Open experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka had an \u2060unusual interruption during her US Open third-round match on Friday, stopping…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-614560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}