The Smell of Marijuana at a Grand Slam: Sabalenka and the Silence Between Two Tosses

New York, late August. Wind from Flushing Meadows drifts through the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, whispering through every row of seats, every gap in the floodlights. On a side court, where spectators are still settling into their places, Aryna Sabalenka steps up to the baseline. She tosses the ball once, lets it drop. Tosses it a second time, catches it again. A strange pause: between a two-time defending champion who usually allows no hesitation. Sabalenka turns to the chair umpire and signals. She does not serve. She whispers something, her face wrinkles. Then the crowd understands: the smell of marijuana drifting from the park outside is so strong she cannot continue. That was the third game of the third round of the US Open, where Sabalenka faced Kamilla Rakhimova, an unseeded Russian who played with full heart. The champion was chasing a third straight title at the event, entering with the aura of the best hard-court player on the planet – an aura she built over the last two years. Yet the thing that stopped the match was not a devastating forehand or a tactical defensive move; it was a non-athletic scent, originating from a place no one controls: the surrounding park. When an athlete of Sabalenka's calibre has to stop her service motion because of marijuana smoke, we witness a brutal intrusion into a world controlled down to the millimetre. A tennis court is a sacred space of rhythm. Every player has a routine before serving: breathe, look down, toss, swing. The routine makes it possible to block out unwanted thoughts. When an unfamiliar smell hits, the body's first defensive systems react before the brain has a chance to process. Sabalenka was not simply uncomfortable; she was pushed out of the tranquil, secure zone she spent hours building. There is a common philosophy when writing about sport: "When the stands are empty, you can hear the breath of the match more clearly." Today the stands were not empty, but there was another emptiness – the gap between the first toss and the second – where the breath of the match became more audible than ever. The story of marijuana at the US Open is actually not new. Nick Kyrgios has complained; Maria Sakkari has complained. Yet this time the complainant is the player dominating hard courts, the one everyone assumes is a machine without emotions. What caught my attention, as someone who regularly follows the annual tour, was how Sabalenka reacted after the match. She laughed, joking that the match went by too quickly for her to know what marijuana felt like. That humour does not hide the sensitivity of a woman who can sense every tiny change on the court. It shows a remarkable mentality: instead of being furious, she chose to turn a nuisance into a funny story. Perhaps this is why she never lost the rhythm of her match. This story raises a tactical issue often overlooked: the continuity of the service routine. In modern tennis, the serve is the ultimate weapon, yet it is also the moment of greatest mental vulnerability. Analysts can talk about serve speed or first-serve points won, but what is difficult to reflect via statistics is what happens inside a player's head. Sabalenka is known for a disciplined routine: slow, string adjustment, look at the ball, deep breath. When marijuana scent invaded, she could not complete a single serve. Technically, she simply had to toss again; but psychologically, her entire focus had been derailed. What we saw was only a wince, but inside was a battle to return her body to equilibrium. I have followed many big matches, and I realize that the greatest champions are not immune to distraction. No one is fully immune – not even those who are best trained. What makes them different is the speed at which they return to their orbit. Sabalenka took about two seconds to signal the umpire. She did not argue, did not complain to her opponent, did not look for someone in the stands. She simply acknowledged the source of discomfort and resumed her game. It is a form of intelligence – not the fastest running, but every step intentional, like the midfielders I often describe in football. Each touch of Sabalenka’s is like a sentence, and the next chapter of the match is written with patience. The more intriguing aspect lies in the USTA's response. Spokesman Brendan McIntyre affirmed the grounds are a smoke-free facility, and security will handle matters when aware. No fans were caught smoking or were ejected. This detail is worth pausing on: the source of the smell was not inside the tennis grounds, but from the park outside. In other words, the USTA cannot control an odour carried by the wind from beyond its borders. This is like a fable about control in modern sport. We believe that when major tournaments are staged, everything is within reach: balls, net, rules, media contracts. But the marijuana odour is a reminder that there are things outside the design. No one can build an air-filtering system for an outdoor tennis court, and no one can change the direction of the wind. Looking back at history, players have faced countless kinds of distractions: birds, planes, mobile phones, even a stray piece of paper. But the smell of marijuana has a different property. It is an olfactory stimulus that directly activates the nervous system and can evoke associations completely unrelated to the court. Unlike temporary noise, a smell lingers, clings, and can make people feel a part of their sacred space is invaded. However, Sabalenka's reaction suggests she treated it more as a nuisance than a threat. Perhaps after two championships she has enough experience to distinguish what can ruin a match from what merely generates a good story. For tennis fans, this is a minor incident. But if you look deeper, it reveals a contradictory perspective to what we believe about elite sport. We often think champions are conditioned to focus absolutely and can turn distraction into strength. But the truth is that those who are most sensitive to distraction are precisely the ones who reach the highest levels. They are not insensitive; they are people who build protective fences around their focus. When that fence is pierced by marijuana smoke, what they reveal is not weakness, but a polished capacity to endure. Sabalenka could laugh because she knew her next serve would still fly at 180 km/h, despite the scent trying to seep into her consciousness. I wonder: if the smell had arrived exactly at a breakpoint, or during a tense tie-break, would the story have been told differently? Perhaps she would not have laughed. But the third round is where top players often experiment, relax the tempo, and are not always as tense as a final. The episode occurred in a relatively low-key context and therefore becomes a fragment that shows the limits of control in sport. Even in the third round of a prestigious Grand Slam, one can smell the outside world. The USTA has a no-smoking policy, but that policy can only operate within its own property line. When the scent from the neighbouring park drifts over, the boundary between the sacred grounds of tennis and the noisy urban life is blurred. This can be read as a metaphor: no matter how hard we try to separate the sporting world from society's complexities, those complexities still find a way in. A small wisp of marijuana crossing Arthur Ashe may not deserve a line in a match summary, but it reminds us that athletes are human beings living in a world they cannot fully control. A phrase used in sports documentaries has stayed with me: "Every touch of the ball is a sentence." Sabalenka, at the moment she paused, did not produce a complete sentence. She produced an ellipsis – a gap for spectators to fill with their own interpretations. That gap could indicate discomfort, a distraction, or the recognition that even champions have moments of confusion. But how she handled it afterwards – stepping back to the line, adjusting her breath, and continuing to fight – is what truly deserves to be written. Taking a step back, the marijuana smell at the US Open is not an issue about rules or a scandal. It is a minor event that shows the subtlety of this sport: seemingly irrelevant details can become part of the story of a match. In a few years, we may not remember the name of the loser in the third round of that year, but we will remember the image of Sabalenka stopping her serve because of a scent, and then grinning to continue. If sport is a universal language, that moment was an interjection – short, emotional, and never predicted in the script. So, in the end, what lingers after the smell disperses? The answer lies in how the annual season teaches us that nothing is perfect. A player may win two consecutive Grand Slams but still be disturbed by an odour drifting in from beyond the court. Greatness is not about never being distracted, but about knowing that you can find your way back even after being knocked off orbit. Sabalenka, with her smile and her next serve, taught us a lesson in mental flexibility – something no statistic can ever measure.