Changes are afoot at the US Open Grand Slam, as an extra day has been added to the schedule. The action will now begin on Sunday, as the main draw at Flushing Meadows has been expanded to 15 days.
This will mean that the famous tournament will, for the first time in its Open history, begin on a weekend. The move has been made to meet increasing demand for the event, while it also serves as a nice boost in extra revenue for the venue and organisers.
Extra Day for Fans
The extra day, falling on a weekend as it is, is likely to draw in a big viewing crowd not only at Flushing Meadows but to the television broadcasts as well. It also means an extra full day of tennis predictions for the first-round action. So bookmakers, tennis fans and the US Tennis Association (USTA) will all return benefits from the tournament’s expansion.
Meeting Demand
The 2024 US Open was a record-breaking year for the tournament. The USTA announced that over 1 million fans had attended the two-week festival of tennis in New York, breaking through that attendance barrier for the first time.
That was a huge increase of 8% over the numbers from the previous year and it also marked a three-year trend in growing demand. Day 1 alone saw more than 74,000 people pour through the game, which in and of itself was a first-day record for attendance at Flushing Meadows.
Opening Sunday
What will happen on the new Opening Sunday of the 2025 US Open? The extra day does not change the format of any main draw whatsoever. It’s only the scheduling of the matches involved that will shift. Both men’s and women’s singles First round matches will be played on Sunday, with the round extending through Monday and Tuesday.
The Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium will both have seated reservations available for both day and night sessions on Sunday. The Grandstand and General Grounds Admission tickets will have reservations for the day sessions only. In total, there will be six ticketed sessions on Opening Sunday for day and night play.
Falling In Line
The expansion of a Grand Slam tournament is not a new thing. The Australian Open expanded in 2024 to include a Sunday start and a 15-day schedule. But long before that, the French Open instituted the change way back in 2006, which now leaves only Wimbledon in London, as the only Grand Slam not to go to the 15-day schedule.
Will Wimbledon change too? That may be a tougher one to break, as Wimbledon is steeped in tradition, such as the address code that players have to adhere to, and the Monday start is very much a tradition of the tournament as well.
Fan Based Approach Grows
No longer is the approach to the US Grand Slam about just getting into the grounds and sitting to watch a match. Before this year’s tournament even starts, there will be six days where the public can gain free ground admission as part of the US Open Fan Week.
This is all part of the build-up to the start of the main draw, where fans get to access some dynamic events. There will be a lot of family-friendly activities happening, like music, exhibition matches, a kids’ day and interactive games.
Alleviating Pressure
There is another reason why the extra day has been added to the 2025 US Open event. The move is also designed to alleviate some pressure that players and fans have to deal with in late-night finishes.
Last year, there was a US Open match that didn’t finish until 2:35 am, despite a late-night policy that had been instituted. Late matches have been a common feature at the US Open for some time, due to the difficulties of timing and scheduling tennis matches.
There’s no way to know whether a match will last 90 minutes or more than 4 hours, for example. So there is a lot of shuffling around of fixtures and start times that happen at tennis tournaments, and sometimes a late-night finish is just unavoidable.
The hope is that having an extra day to spread out the more congested fixtures list through the early rounds, will help to take some pressure off of that.
In Summary
In total, the USTA is expecting that the extra day at the 2025 US Open will see an extra 70,000 fans come through the gates. So another attendance record is very likely to be broken at this year’s Slam, as the organisers look to keep everyone happy. The US Open is the fourth and final Grand Slam of the year, following the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon.
