U.S. Open, international tennis tournament, the fourth and final of the major events that make up the annual Grand Slam of tennis (the other tournaments are the Australian Open, the French Open, and the Wimbledon Championships). The U.S. Open is held each year over a two-week period in late August and early September. Since 1978 all the U.S. Open championships have been played on the acrylic hard courts of the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) National Tennis Center (renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 2006) in Flushing Meadows, Queens, N.Y. The U.S. Open consists of championships in five main categories: men’s singles and doubles, women’s singles and doubles, and mixed doubles.
The U.S. Open developed from one of the oldest tennis championships in the world: the U.S. National Championship, which was established in 1881 as a national men’s singles and doubles competition. The tournament was open only to clubs that were members of the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA; now the USTA). The event expanded to include women’s singles in 1887, women’s doubles in 1889, and mixed doubles in 1892. The five championships were contested at different locales until 1968, when all five tournaments were finally hosted at a common site (the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens, N.Y.), whereupon the championships became known as the U.S. Open. The tournament moved to Flushing Meadows in 1978. As a unique result of this decentralized history, the tournament has been played on a variety of surfaces: from 1881 to 1974, it was played on grass; from 1975 to 1977, on clay; and since 1978, on DecoTurf, a fast hard-court surface comprising an acrylic layer over an asphalt or concrete base.
The main court at the U.S. Open (and the National Tennis Center’s largest venue) is the 22,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium, which is followed in capacity by the 10,000-seat Louis Armstrong Stadium, the 6,000-seat Grandstand Stadium, and smaller side courts. All courts are lit and therefore conducive to night play, and the inner courts are painted blue to facilitate the tracking of the ball. Like most major championships tied to professional sports, the U.S. Open is as much a media extravaganza and tourist attraction as a sporting event, with special musical acts and family activities scheduled throughout the two-week period. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
