At the US Open, Fan Week gets some star power
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Fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York on Tuesday, for the mixed doubles match of Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz against Jack Draper and Jessica Pegula.
PHOTO: MICHELLE V. AGINS/NYTIMES
David Waldstein
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NEW YORK – Celine Wallenhorst walked into Louis Armstrong Stadium for the first time on Aug 19 and saw history for free.
There, on the court below, Venus Williams teamed up with Reilly Opelka in the US Open’s new mixed doubles event, an updated format that brought out some of the best players in matches that are usually contested by relatively unknowns in front of a few hundred fans.
Wallenhorst, a school teacher living in New York, made the spontaneous decision to watch a roster of stars for the price of a subway ride.
“It’s actually pretty incredible,” she said, “because everything in New York is so expensive, but this is free.”
Traditionally, the week before the main tournament, known as Fan Week, features the qualifying rounds, a low-key roster of singles matches among lower-ranked players competing for the last spots in the Open.
Fans are allowed in for free and the week has evolved into a crowded, but still affordable, attraction.
In 2025, several matches, featuring big names like Novak Djokovic, Naomi Osaka and Carlos Alcaraz, were held on Tuesday of Fan Week in Arthur Ashe Stadium, where spectators paid for tickets; others were in Armstrong, where admission was free.
The new mixed doubles innovation brought more energy and a buzz to Flushing Meadows.
Still, for some purists, the main event of Fan Week remained the qualifying rounds, where fringe players pour everything they have into fierce battles on the outer courts, desperate to get into the main draw, which begins on Aug 24.
Christopher Winter, an unemployed former travel company worker from New York who has been coming to the qualifying rounds for years, was at Court 13 to watch a match between two women doing just that. He sat directly behind the coaches of one of the players, perhaps 3 metres from the court.
As the match progressed, roars rose from Ashe and wafted over to Court 13.
Winter was not impressed with the new mixed doubles, where it takes only four games to win a set, another twist designed to streamline the event.
“It’s an exhibition, isn’t it?” he said. This was not the case, he suggested, on Court 13. “These people here are desperate to win.”
The new mixed doubles did feel a bit like an exhibition at times, where players have fun in the fast-paced set-up, and might not be disconsolate if they lose. But it is real. Despite the radically different format, it will count in the record books and the winners will split a US$1 million (S$1.3 million) prize.
The matches in Ashe, which was largely full, required tickets that ranged from about US$25 to a couple of hundred dollars, but still far less than seats during the main two weeks of the US Open.
The relative affordability of Fan Week was the very issue that Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, wanted to highlight on his visit to the site on Aug 18.
Mr Mamdani swept through the busy grounds late that afternoon with security guards and campaign workers. At one point he was stopped by a man he clearly knew. They hugged and the man asked him: “What are you doing here?”
“Watching the qualies,” Mr Mamdani said with a smile.
He watched some of the match between Japan’s Mai Hontama and American Kristina Penickova. He said he would love for the main tournament to be more accessible for regular New Yorkers. “This is at the heart of the crisis of affordability in New York City,” he said. “You can see a glimpse of the city that could be, amidst the city that is.”
It was quintessential New York: crowded and expensive, with a couple of exceptions, if you know where to look. NYTIMES
