NEW YORK -- Dane Schlossberg saw police officers blocking the metal gates, heard other fans shouting obscenities and listened to crowds chanting outside Louis Armstrong Stadium.
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Hardly what anyone would expect in the genteel world of tennis. The jumbled scene surprised Schlossberg -- in a totally different way.
"Actually, I thought it would be more chaotic," he said Saturday at the U.S. Open.
Trying to play two men's semifinals before Tropical Storm Hanna hit, tournament organizers shifted the schedule. So during the second set of the Roger Federer-Novak Djokovic match at 23,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium, they announced Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray would soon start next door at 10,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium.
All seats on a first-come, first-served basis.
Immediately, a couple thousand fans rushed down the ramps at Ashe for the 100-yard dash to Armstrong. Public-address announcements to "please take your time" were soon replaced by security guards yelling "slow down!"
Dev Sirur was among the first to stake out a decent seat for Nadal-Murray.
"We wanted to beat the stampede," he said. "We were sitting in the rafters at Ashe and I'm a Djokovic fan. But I wanted to see Nadal, too. At first when they said what was happening, we booed. But then when I got here, we got great seats. So it's OK."
No telling whether Nadal and Murray agreed. With the stadium just one-quarter filled, it easy to hear a pair of babies crying, an usher loudly ordering a fan to sit down and the music wafting over from Ashe.
The match between Federer and Djokovic already had been moved up an hour to start at 11 a.m. and left officials clinging to the hope of playing the semifinals back-to-back at Ashe.
"If you split them up, you're not going to have the opportunity," tournament director Jim Curley said.
But when the weather pattern worsened, Curley said the Open tried to accommodate everyone -- players, fans and CBS, which did the telecast -- and switched Nadal-Murray across the way.
"This is the decision we went with," he said.
