At the US Open’s Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong stadiums, there’s a hum that never goes away. It sort of sounds like the murmur cicadas make. The closer you listen, though, you realize that instead of insects erupting from the ground to breed and scream in the woods, it’s actually thousands of people spending hundreds of dollars to descend upon a tennis tournament to…chat.

It’s a problem for tennis fans because tennis, generally, is a beautifully acoustic experience.

The low din muffles the sound of the ball coming off a player’s strings. It mutes the line calls. It deadens the squeaks and squeals of sneakers sprinting across the hardcourt. The dull, inescapable mumble turns the sport into a frictionless, pressure-free exercise.

So what’s going on with the crowd? Why won’t they stop yapping and let tennis tennis?

“We’re talking about people who are not at all interested in the tennis,” says Caitlin Thompson, the founder of Racquet, a media company that focuses on tennis and culture.

“This is by far the most chaotic, unhinged, oversaturated and non-tennis-inclined audience I’ve ever experienced at the US Open,” adds Thompson, who has been attending the tourney since the mid-2000s.

On the........

© Vox