Players on extreme heat: It's part of the game

Nothing shady was going on at the U.S. Open Tuesday. The temperature was rising on both sides of the court, the sun boring down on contenders and unseeded hopefuls alike.

But while the 109-degree on-court reading (96 on the tennis center grounds) in midafternoon was noticeably hot for Flushing Meadows during this annual two-week championship, the players reminded that they have seen much worse in a sport that follows the sun year-round.

"OK, it was hot," said Cyprus' Marcos Baghdatis, the No. 16 seed who admitted to feeling "heavy" in his five-set upset loss to Frenchman Arnaud Clement. "But, I mean, usual day. We play so many matches in the heat. [Monday] was hot, too; we had to practice. So . . ."

Mardy Fish, the Florida-based Minnesota native who needed five sets in the midday oven to cook Czech Jan Hajek's goose, found the weather - in comparison with recent tournaments in Atlanta, Washington and Cincinnati - "just feels nice."

"Yes, it was hot," Fish said. "Probably hottest it's going to be here. But, I mean, what we went through this summer in Atlanta, it's just not even close. It's 50 degrees less."

Even Novak Djokovic, who has demonstrated a certain fear and trembling in long, hot matches and Tuesday needed five sets to hold off countryman Viktor Troicki, refused to complain. "Well, look," Djokovic said, "it was very hot, just very hot. But the heat issue is something that's just there, and the same for everybody."

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, tournament officials invoked the Grand Slam tournaments' "extreme weather policy" in relation to the women's matches. That meant that, for any women's match begun after implementation of the policy, a 10-minute break was available to players after the second set - if at least one player requested it from the chair umpire.

The rule does not apply to men's play and Clement was among those who agreed that it shouldn't.

"Some players like to play indoor, some like to play on clay, some like to play on grass," Clement said. "Some players play better than others, physically, so I think it's good for the game to have different conditions to play. I think [intense heat] is part of the game, completely."

At the Australian Open, contested each January at the height of the Southern Hemisphere summer, temperatures in the 100s are not unusual. That tournament has the luxury of a retractable roof on its center court, and soaring temperatures have moved officials to close the roof occasionally.

In 2009, one set of a women's quarterfinal, featuring Serena Williams' victory over Svetlana Kuznetsova, was played in 107-degree heat in Melbourne before tournament officials closed the roof. But, to Kuznetsova, who defeated Japan's Kimiko Date Krumm under the high-noon sun Tuesday, an uneven application of "extreme weather" policies can be more unsettling than the New York heat.

Kuznetsova noted that, in Australia, the weather rule states that the roof will not be closed after a match has begun, "but they stop it and they close the roof because [Williams] complained," she said. "I'm not sure how the rules should work."

But Tuesday? "This year was hot everywhere," Kuznetsova said. "I mean, just in Russia it was so hot, and Cincinnati was so hot. You just go along and you say, 'OK, this is what I have to deal with.' "

Djokovic admitted that, "in very difficult conditions, feeling exhausted, you start panicking a little when you don't feel great. But the weather is the weather. You just have to try to be patient and wait for the shadows - like I did."