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US Open Tennis Information and History

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About the US Open

The US Open tennis tournament began in 1881, is one of the oldest tennis championships in the world.

The tournament is chronologically the fourth and final event of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments. It is held annually in August and September over a two-week period (the weeks before and after Labor Day weekend). The main tournament consists of five championships: men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles, with additional tournaments for senior, junior, and wheelchair players. Since 1978, the tournament has been played on acrylic hard court at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the Queens borough of New York City. The complex was renamed after King during the 2006 US Open. King is a pioneer in women's tennis and the founder of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), the Women's Sports Foundation and World Team Tennis (WTT), which she founded with her former husband, Larry King.

The US Open differs from the other 3 Grand Slam tournaments in that there are final-set tiebreaks. In the other three majors, the fifth set for the men and the third set for the women continue until someone wins by two games.

History of the US Open Tennis

The US Open grew from an exclusive entertainment event for high society to a $17 million prize money championship (about $1.4 million for each of the winners of the singles tournaments) for over 600 male and female professional players. In 2008 the prize money will top 120.6 million dollars in total.

The US Open originated from two separate tournaments: the men's tournament and the women's tournament. The event was first held in August 1881 and staged at the Newport Casino, Newport, Rhode Island (men's singles only). The championships were known as the U.S. National Singles Championship for men. Only clubs that were members of the United States National Lawn Tennis Association were permitted to enter. From 1884 until 1911 the tournament used a challenge system whereby the defending champion automatically qualified for the next year's final. The Newport Casino hosted the men's singles tournament until 1915 when it moved to the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills, New York. From 1921 until 1923 it was played at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia and returned to Forest Hills in 1924.

In 2006, the US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to implement instant replay reviews of calls, using Hawk-Eye. Available only on the stadium courts (Ashe and Armstrong), each player was allowed two challenges per set plus one additional challenge during a tiebreak but was not penalized with the loss of a challenge if it was upheld. The USTA announced that starting in 2008, each player will be given three challenges per set with an extra challenge if the set goes to a tiebreak.

Once a challenge is made, the official review (a 3-D computer simulation based on multiple high-speed video cameras) is shown to the players, umpires, and audience on the stadium video boards and to the television audience at the same time. The system is said to be accurate to within five millimeters.

During the 2006 US Open, 30.5% of men's challenges and 35.85% of women's challenges were upheld. During the 2007 US Open, 95 out of 320 challenges were upheld - or 30.6%.

Six years after the men's nationals were held, the first official U.S. Women's National Singles Championship was held at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in 1887, followed by the U.S. Women's National Doubles Championship in 1889. The first U.S. Mixed Doubles Championship was held alongside the women's singles and doubles. In 1900, the U.S. National Men's Doubles Championship was held for the first time. Tournaments were held in the east and the west of the country to determine the best two teams (sectional winners). These then competed in a play-off — the winner played the defending champions in the challenge round.

The open era began in 1968 when all five events were merged into the newly named US Open at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens. Notably, the 1968 combined tournament was opened to professionals; none of the predecessor tournaments allowed professionals to compete. That year, 96 men and 63 women entered the event with prize money amounting to $100,000. In 1970 the US Open was the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to introduce the tie-break at the end of a set. The US Open was originally played on grass until Forest Hills switched to Har-Tru clay courts in 1975. In 1978, the event moved from Forest Hills to its current home at Flushing Meadows, and the surface changed again, to the current DecoTurf. (Jimmy Connors is the only man to have won the US Open on more than one surface; in fact, he won it on all three surfaces. Female player Chris Evert won it on two different surfaces.)

The US Open Grounds

The main court is located at the 24,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium, named after Arthur Ashe, the African American tennis player who won the inaugural men's final of the US Open in 1968. (The British tennis player Virginia Wade won the first woman's US Open final, five months after she turned professional.) Court Number 2 is Louis Armstrong Stadium, which stood as the main stadium until the completion of Ashe stadium. Court Number 3 is the Grandstand Stadium, which is attached to the Louis Armstrong Stadium. Sidecourts 4, 7 and 11 each have a seating capacity of well over 1,000.

All the courts used by the US Open are lit, meaning that TV coverage of the tournament can extend into prime time to attract more ratings. This has recently been used to the advantage of the USA Network on cable and especially for CBS, the American broadcast TV outlet for the Open for many years, which used its influence to move the women's singles final to Saturday night to draw better television ratings.

In 2005, all US Open and US Open Series tennis courts were given blue inner courts and green outer courts to make it easier to see the ball. This change has been met with mixed reactions from both players and fans, with many players saying that the ball is no easier to see with the blue courts.

The DecoTurf surface at the US Open is a fast surface, having slightly less friction and producing a lower bounce compared to other hard courts (most notably the Rebound Ace surface formerly used at the Australian Open). For this reason, many serve-and-volley players have found success at the US Open.