Tennis
August 2015US Open Tennis
More than 700,000 tennis fans will flock to Flushing Meadows to enjoy the US Tennis Open, the final Grand Slam tournament of the year.
The tournament has a long history, starting as a men's singles and doubles tournament in 1881, and evolving over the years to become a major sporting extravaganza, which features five event championships: men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles.
The tennis tournament originated in Newport, Rhode Island, and the five major events that constitute the US Open have been contested at nine different venues, before the tournament moved to its current location, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 1978.
The Open era, when the tournament was open to professional players for the first time, began in 1968. Today more than 600 male and female professional tennis players come to the Open to compete for a total prize-money pot of $US19 million.
The main show court is the 24,000-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium, named after the African-American player who won the men's final in 1968. Court number 2 is the Louis Armstrong Stadium. All the courts at the US Open are floodlit, and evening play is the norm, meaning that the tennis gets prime time television coverage.
