Protester glues feet to floor, delaying Coco Gauff U.S. Open match for 49 minutes

Play between Coco Gauff and Karolína Muchová at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York was stopped Thursday after an environmental protester "glued his feet to the cement floor," an announcer and a tournament official said.

The match between Gauff, of the U.S., and Muchová, of Czechia, was delayed for 49 minutes, the U.S. Tennis Association said. Gauff would go on to win and seal a place in the final on home soil, though fellow American Madison Keys later lost her semifinal.

Thursday's disruption — claimed by the group Extinction Rebellion — follows several protests by environmental activists from other groups, including one that recently blocked the route to the Burning Man festival in Nevada and others that have targeted famed works of art.

A group of environmental protesters was in an upper area, Stacey Allaster, the tournament director, said in an interview during coverage of the tournament.

“When security got there, they found that one of the protesters had physically glued themselves in their bare feet to the cement floor,” Allaster said.

The U.S. Tennis Association said there were four protesters in all, three of whom were escorted out of the stadium. The fourth "affixed their bare feet to the floor of the seating bowl," it said in a statement.

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