The US Open Tennis Championships, commonly called the US Open, is a hardcourt tennis tournament organized by the United States Tennis Association annually in Queens, New York City. It is chronologically the fourth and final of the four Grand Slam tennis events, held after the Australian Open, French Open, and Wimbledon.
The US Open starts on the last Monday of August and continues for two weeks, with the middle weekend coinciding with the United States Labor Day holiday. All players participating must be at least fourteen years old.
The tournament is one of the oldest tennis championships in the world, originally known as the U.S. National Championships, for which men's singles and men's doubles were first played in August 1881. It is the only Grand Slam that was not affected by cancellation due to World War I and World War II, nor interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The tournament consists of five primary championships: men's and women's singles, men's and women's doubles, and mixed doubles. The tournament also includes events for senior, junior, and wheelchair players. Since 1978, the tournament has been played on acrylic hardcourts at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York City. Revenue from ticket sales, sponsorships, and television contracts is used to develop tennis in the United States.
This tournament, from 1971 to 2021, employed standard tiebreakers (first to seven points, win by two) in every set of a singles match. Since 2022, new tiebreak rules were initiated and standardized in the final set for all four majors, where if a match reaches six-all in the final set (the third for women and fifth for men), an extended tiebreaker (first to ten points, win by two) is played. The introduction of the extended tiebreaker in 2022 was part of a broader effort to standardize play across the Grand Slam tournaments, ensuring consistency in how matches are decided while also addressing player fatigue and match duration.
The tournament was first held in August 1881 on grass courts at the Newport Casino in Newport, Rhode Island, which is now home to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. That year, only clubs that were members of the United States National Lawn Tennis Association (USNLTA) were permitted to enter. Richard Sears won the men's singles at this tournament, which was the first of his seven consecutive singles titles. From 1884 through 1911, the tournament used a challenge system whereby the defending champion automatically qualified for the next year's final, where he would play the winner of the all-comers tournament.
Only men competed in the U.S. National Championships from 1881 to 1886. It had both a singles and doubles division. The first U.S. Women's National Singles Championship was held at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in 1887. The winner was 17-year-old Philadelphian Ellen Hansell. In that same year, the men's doubles event was played at the Orange Lawn Tennis Club in South Orange, New Jersey.
The women's tournament used a challenge system from 1888 through 1918, except in 1917. Between 1890 and 1906, sectional tournaments were held in the east and the west of the country to determine the best two doubles teams, which competed in a play-off for the right to compete against the defending champions in the challenge round.
The 1888 and the 1889 men's doubles events were played at the Staten Island Cricket Club in Livingston, Staten Island, New York. In the 1893 Championships, the men's doubles event was played at the St. George Cricket Club in Chicago. In 1892, the US Mixed Doubles Championship was introduced and, in 1899, the US Women's National Doubles Championship.
In 1915, the national championships was relocated to the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City. The effort to relocate it to New York City began as early as 1911 when a group of tennis players, headed by New Yorker Karl Behr, started working on it.
In early 1915, a group of about 100 tennis players signed a petition in favor of moving the tournament. They argued that most tennis clubs, players, and fans were located in the New York City area and that it would therefore be beneficial for the development of the sport to host the national championships there. This view was opposed by another group of players that included eight former national singles champions. This contentious issue was brought to a vote at the annual USNLTA meeting on February 5, 1915, with 128 votes in favor of and 119 against relocation. In August 1915, the men's singles tournament was held at the West Side Tennis Club, Forest Hills in New York City for the first time, while the women's tournament was held at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia (the women's singles event was not moved until 1921). From 1917 to 1933, the men's doubles event was held at the Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. In 1934, both men's and women's doubles events were held at Longwood Cricket Club.
From 1921 through 1923, the men's singles tournament was played at the Germantown Cricket Club in Philadelphia. It returned to the West Side Tennis Club in 1924 following the completion of the 14,000-seat Forest Hills Stadium. Although many already regarded it as a major championship, the International Lawn Tennis Federation did not officially designate it as one of the world's major tournaments until 1924. At the 1922 U.S. National Championships, the draw seeded players for the first time to prevent the leading players from playing each other in the early rounds. From 1935 to 1941 and 1946 to 1967, the men's and women's doubles were held at the Longwood Cricket Club.
The Open Era began in 1968 when professional tennis players were allowed to compete for the first time at the Grand Slam tournament held at the West Side Tennis Club. The previous U.S. National Championships had been limited to amateur players. Except for mixed doubles,[] all events at the 1968 national tournament were open to professionals. That year, 96 men and 63 women entered, and prize money totaled $100,000. In 1970, the US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to use a tiebreaker to decide a set that reached a 6–6 score in games. From 1970 through 1974, the US Open used a best-of-nine-point sudden-death tiebreaker before moving to the International Tennis Federation's (ITF) best-of-twelve points system. In 1973, the US Open became the first Grand Slam tournament to award equal prize money to men and women, with that year's singles champions, John Newcombe and Margaret Court, receiving $25,000 each. Since 1975, following complaints about the surface and its impact on the ball's bounce, the tournament has been played on clay courts instead of grass. This was also an experiment to make it more "TV friendly". The addition of floodlights allowed matches to be played at night.
In 1978, the tournament moved from the West Side Tennis Club to the larger and newly constructed USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, 3 miles (4.8 km) to the north. The tournament's court surface also switched from clay to hardcourt. Jimmy Connors is the only individual to have won US Open singles titles on all three surfaces (grass, clay, and hardcourt), while Chris Evert is the only woman to have won US Open singles titles on two surfaces (clay and hardcourt).
The US Open is the only Grand Slam tournament that has been played every year since its inception.
During the 2006 US Open, the complex was renamed to "USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center" in honor of Billie Jean King, a four-time US Open singles champion and one of women's tennis's early pioneers.
With the move to Flushing, the women's final was played between the two men's semi-finals on Saturday, creating a block that came to be known as "Super Saturday". While fan-friendly, the concept proved divisive among players because it gave them less than a day's rest between the semifinal and championship matches. A number of spectators also tended to leave after the women's final, and not stay for the second men's semifinal.
This ended in 2001, when the women's final was moved to prime time to encourage television viewership, citing a major growth in popularity for women's tennis among viewers. This practice was eventually discontinued, and the women's final is currently played in the late afternoon.
For five consecutive tournaments between 2008 through 2012, the men's final was postponed to Monday due to weather. In 2013 and 2014, the USTA intentionally scheduled the men's final on a Monday—a move praised for allowing the men's players an extra day's rest following the semifinals, but drew the ire of the ATP for further deviating from the structure of the other Grand Slams.
In 2015, the US Open returned to a format similar to the other Grand Slams, with women's and men's finals on Saturday and Sunday, and players having an extra day of rest. However, weather delays forced both sets of semifinals to be held on Friday of that year.
In 2018, the tournament was the first Grand Slam tournament that introduced the shot clock to keep a check on the time consumed by players between points. The reason for this change was to increase the pace of play. The clock is placed in a position visible to players, the chair umpire and fans. Since 2020, all Grand Slams, ATP, and WTA tournaments apply this technology.
In 2020, the event was held without spectators due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the Western & Southern Open was also re-located from Cincinnati in order to create a bio-secure bubble for both events due to their proximity. An announcement that the wheelchair tennis competition would not be held caused controversy, because the USTA did not consult with athletes prior to it, as it had with the players' organizations for the able-bodied competitions. After accusations of discrimination, the USTA was forced to backtrack, admitting that it should have discussed the decision with the wheelchair competitors and offering them either $150,000 to be split between them (compared with $3.3m to be split between the players affected by the cancellation of each of the men's and women's qualifying competition and reductions in the mixed-doubles pool), a competition as part of the Open with 95% of the 2019 prize fund, or a competition to be held at the USTA base in Florida.