Before Attempting to Top Opponents, U.S. Open Players Must Beat Traffic

As his driver fought through rush hour traffic, the car broke down, and Smyczek was left stranded on the highway shoulder.

It took about 20 minutes for Smyczek to flag down another driver headed to the Open.

“He pulled over and said, ‘Hey, you guys need a ride or something?’ ” Smyczek recalled the driver asking. Smyczek arrived in time for his match against James Duckworth on Court 17. (Smyczek won in four sets.)

The Open poses many challenges for the tennis elite, from surviving 140-mile-per-hour serves to withstanding New York City’s snark, but perhaps the most fundamental challenge is getting there.

Nearly all of the players stay in Manhattan hotels. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center may sit about 10 miles from Times Square, but it can take an hour or more in crawling traffic. That means that 543 of the world’s best tennis players from 64 countries have to scramble through expressways, tunnels and bridges before they even step on the court.

The commute is coordinated from a room behind Arthur Ashe Stadium. The numbers are dizzying: 175 cars, 75 buses, 1,300 rides a day, 1.1 million miles logged during the tournament.

Dozens of the drivers are former law enforcement officers. “They can deal with the traffic — and player anxiety,” said Roy D. Fugazy, the president of Fugazy Sports & Entertainment, the transportation company that works with the Open.

The traffic slog is part of what makes the Open distinct from the other major tournaments, which are set in more peaceful locations, like Wimbledon, Melbourne and the outskirts of Paris.

Here, as New Yorkers know all too well, the commute does not always go so well.

Dmitry Tursunov, a Russian player ranked 34th, said his car did not show up Tuesday at his hotel to take him to Queens, forcing him to find a car pool.

“We’re talking about the U.S. Open, which spends a ridiculous amount of money,” he said. “A lot of players complain about it, a lot of players have problems with transportation.”

When Open organizers surveyed the players about their experiences after previous tournaments, officials said the top complaint was always the same: transportation. Those complaints make their way to the desk of F. Skip Gilbert, a senior official with the United States Tennis Association. He is responsible for, among other things, making sure all of the players make it through the tunnels and across the bridges in time for their matches.

“It is thankless, and we know that there are going to be times, thanks to a car breaking down, or weather, or incredible traffic or something goes on, you’re going to run a minute late and you’re going to expect to get criticized,” Gilbert said. “And if you do, you smile and say, ‘Yes, we’re very sorry and we’ll try not to do it again.’ ”

He and his team manage the commutes from a small office on the stadium grounds, where nearly a dozen dispatchers pore over color-coded spreadsheets.Multilingual workers field questions and remind players of their pickup times. Radio dispatches fill the air from dawn to dusk.

Fugazy, the contractor who oversees the cars, said that when he began handling the Open transportation in 2006, his team had to travel among about 15 pickup locations. Now, they pick up athletes at more than 200 places.

He said he worked to match players with chauffeurs who will suit their temperament. “You have certain players that have their nuances, their needs, and we’re managing their expectations, so we marry them with certain drivers,” Fugazy said.

This year marked the debut of a software system designed to manage the Open’s fleet of 250 player vehicles and buses.

The software creates a profile for each player that includes hotel addresses and match times. Players typically ride in their own car, but Fugazy sometimes has to resort to car pools, sparking occasional grumbles.

Mornings are the busiest times as cars from the Open swarm around hotels — like the Grand Hyatt, the Waldorf-Astoria and the Le Parker Meridien — in search of athletes toting large racket bags. Players are advised to allow 45 to 60 minutes for the drive. But there can be additional obstacles. Like Labor Day weekend traffic, and special trips to the airport for losing players.

Nevertheless, tennis officials are willing to bend the rules for top players, like Andy Murray, Fugazy said.

“We know if Mr. Murray needs an extra car, we’re probably more likely to provide that because he’s earned the right to have that kind of consideration,” Gilbert said.

Some players are sanguine about the traffic woes.

“I think they’re trying their level best,” said Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi, a 12th-ranked doubles player from Pakistan. “But, unfortunately, just New York City, man.”

Unfortunately, a bad commute can affect a player’s game. Caroline Wozniacki, a Danish player ranked eighth, said her car was late Thursday. She still won her match in two sets, but she said the drive threw off her routine.

“I was a bit stressed after my first round,” she said. “When there’s a little bit of traffic, and then the car is 10 minutes late, then all of a sudden, you’re like, under pressure.”

Ben Rothenberg contributed reporting.

App for N.F.L. Players to Promote Safe Rides

The N.F.L. players association hopes to address the issue in a new partnership it has formed with the technology firm Uber, which makes a smartphone app that acts as a digital dispatcher for people looking for a taxi or a car service.

The service, which is available in more than half of the N.F.L.’s cities, will allow players and their families to hail a ride in minutes with a few taps on their phone. Uber’s service would complement an existing program run by the union in which players can summon a car by placing a phone call. Because Uber relies on G.P.S., players will not need to know the precise address of their location to get a ride home. “This generation is more tied to having a mobile device,” said DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the players association, who has used Uber for more than a year. “If we can move to a world where we are using the phenomenon to increase the safety of our players, then the partnership with Uber is a no-brainer.”

Uber already works with professional sports teams including the San Francisco Giants and with prominent players like Kevin Love of the Minnesota Timberwolves. The company operates in 17 of the N.F.L.’s 31 cities, but it has been unable to break into markets like Houston and Miami because of regulations governing taxi companies.

Players will be offered $200 in credits as an inducement to use the service, which begins next week.

“We’re working to educate city governments that this reduces drunk driving and gets people out of their cars,” said Travis Kalanick, an Uber co-founder and the chief executive. “Sometimes, pro players’ lives are unscheduled, and that’s where Uber can be helpful.”

The program has conveniences, but it is unclear how many more players will use it. The league ran a program that was dismantled several years ago because, among other things, some players feared that teams would keep tabs on their whereabouts. In 2010, the union started Player Transportation Link, a phone-based program that has received an average of 50 calls a month during the past three years. Teams also offer their own security services.

Since 2006, about 70 percent of the players arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated were apprehended in the metropolitan area where they were based, according to union figures. Most instances of driving while intoxicated involved players who were in the league a year or two, and occurred on Fridays and Saturdays from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.

Since 2006, players paid nearly $2.4 million in fines and lost almost $2.9 million in salary in cases of impaired driving. Some players lost far more.

Last December, Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Josh Brent was charged with intoxication manslaughter after Jerry Brown, a linebacker on the team’s practice squad, was killed in a car that Brent was driving early on a Saturday morning in a suburb of Dallas. Brown and Brent had been teammates at the University of Illinois when Brent was arrested in 2009 for driving under the influence.

Ultimately, the union and Uber hope that the ease of hailing a cab with a smartphone translates into smarter behavior. “The goal is to come up with a web of things so players can take part,” Smith said.

Big European Players Embrace the Car-Sharing Trend

LONDON — The big automakers and car rental companies are taking matters into their own hands.

Instead of letting the popularity of car-sharing disrupt their business, they are joining in, and even taking the lead, with their own new ventures in the hopes of holding onto existing customers and connecting with future ones.

Daimler and the rental giant Europcar have joined forces to create Car2Go, while BMW has teamed up with the car-rental company Sixt to form DriveNow. Both companies offer a technology-driven twist on the on-street rental model made popular by Zipcar, which itself is owned by Avis.

“Our core business in the ’70s was selling cars; in the ’80s, late ’70s came the great innovation of leasing and financing,” said Tony Douglas, head of marketing and sales at BMW’s mobility unit. “Now you can pay per use of a car. It’s like the music industry. You used to have to buy an album, now you can pay per play.”

Mr. Douglas added that, particularly among young people, “you’re going to see the rise of car-sharing in cities and the decline of owning my own car.”

Those in the industry foresee a huge change in the way people, especially in cities, think about getting around. The future of mobility, they believe, will be “multi-modal,” with urban dwellers using smartphones to plan mix-and-match trips that combine cars, bikes, public transportation and walking.

“We just think it’s the future, as simple as that,” said Robert Henrich, the chief executive of Daimler Mobility Services, which includes Car2Go. “Young customers cannot imagine a life without smartphones anymore, and we need to be part of the smartphone world.”

Last year, about 2.3 million drivers worldwide belonged to a car-sharing service, a number expected to increase to 26 million by 2020, said Martyn Briggs, mobility expert at the consulting group Frost & Sullivan. About two-thirds are likely to use station-based services like Zipcar, while a third will use the new, one-way approach, in which cars have no set home location, he said.

The new sector’s growth is being propelled by a number of factors, including urbanization, the need to address problems like congestion and pollution, a big drop in car sales to young people, and, of course, the availability of technologies that enable more flexible approaches.

While Zipcar, which is available in North America and a handful of European countries, rents by the hour and requires vehicles to be returned to a designated parking spot at a time agreed upon in advance, Car2Go and DriveNow customers pay by the minute, and leave the cars in any legal space whenever they are finished. Drivers generally use them for quick, one-way trips that do not need to be planned ahead of time.

The companies negotiate parking rights with local governments, allowing their vehicles to float freely within a designated area, usually a city’s limits. When customers want a car, they use a smartphone to locate the one nearest them and a membership card to get in.

Both companies, whose approach requires GPS and an Internet connection in every car, started in Germany, where they are highly visible and popular, particularly among young people.

“In every big city almost, you see these vehicles standing around, and you can jump in and take it,” said Thorsten Wagner, a spokesman for the Automotive Institute for Management at the European Business School in Oestrich-Winkel, Germany.

A student recently complained to him about a local variant that required users to return vehicles to a designated parking spot, saying “‘This is inflexible, it’s not real car-sharing,”’ Mr. Wagner said. “It opened my eyes to how big this approach is.”

Car2Go has expanded across Europe and North America, and now has 9,500 cars and 500,000 customers in 25 cities, including Amsterdam, London, Miami and Seattle. DriveNow, which plans to expand, operates in five German cities, plus San Francisco, though its California operation offers less flexible parking.

Volkswagen, Citroën and Ford are among the other big manufacturers venturing into car-sharing. The German rail operator Deutsche Bahn runs the successful Flinkster, and Autolib operates a fleet of electric cars in Paris with backing from the Bolloré industrial group.

But Daimler and BMW are the clear leaders, and Mr. Wagner said it would be hard for competitors to catch up.

The companies, and industry analysts, say their flexible approach is just a taste of the innovations to come in an area they call urban mobility.