The OP pointed out that the US Open this year was unique in that officials stopped players from warming up even when the opportunity was there. This was the only tournament I've seen in my lifetime where this happened, scorekeepers and refs stopping players from warming up.
It is fair for everyone, yes. There are times at other tournaments where the opportunity to warm up isn't always present, true. If you don't have the chance to hit balls before a match there are things you can do to maximize your chances of a good performance, of course, and I think it's a healthy conversation to have.
But the main point of this thread was that it is unprecedented to see warm up capped at 2 minutes, and to see players waiting for 15-20 minutes by their open table for their match while being forbidden to hit balls. None of the players liked this. Zero. I didn't care for it myself. If I don't get a chance to warm up because we need to keep the tournament moving that is one thing, but I don't think anyone understood this rule.
The question is whether we would like to see this rule in the future. I am not a fan of it. It's not a deal breaker, and I'm not suggesting the US Open was a failure. This was a relatively manageable hurdle. It was just a strange rule that players hadn't seen before that none of us liked.
For those who feel differently, can you explain to me the benefits of this rule? If you are a tournament director and players are waiting by their open tables, is there a good reason to prohibit them from warming up? When all the players oppose a policy it might be a good idea for the reasoning behind it to be explained.
It has to simply be down to logistics surely?
There's no obvious reason why they would introduce this rule for the sake of it, given all snooker events have practice tables and (I believe, but happy to be corrected) the other Matchroom pool series events also have at least 1 practice table (of course they have much smaller fields).
I suspect they simply couldn't arrange for a sufficient number of practice tables, so decided to limit everyone. Its definitely not ideal and it would be surprising if it wasn't rectified next year.