The U.S. Open Is Going to Be Very Different This Year
Arthur Ashe Stadium during the 2016 men’s final between Novak Djokovic of Serbia and Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland.
Photographer: Tim Clayton - Corbis/Corbis Sport
The U.S. Open is an end-of-summer ritual like no other: The climax of the professional tennis season is a glamorous, raucous welcome back from the beaches and mountains to New York, a city that imparts on the most enormous of all tennis tournaments its signal swarm and swagger.
To be there is special, though not exclusive: More than 700,000 people are expected to file into the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center over the next two weeks. In and around the city, it’s the one time of year when tennis is the sports conversation. The Yankees’ playoff chances and Odell Beckham Jr.’s soundness can wait.