At the US Open, the night session is such an old tradition that it actually predates the tournament’s current home. It began at the West Side Tennis Club in 1975, when tournament director Bill Talbert, who liked to experiment, introduced two major changes: the move from grass to green clay and the scheduling of matches in the evening. Three years later, the tournament moved from Forest Hills to its current home in Flushing Meadows, taking its new tradition of matches after dark with it. Over the following decade, those evening sessions, once little more than experiments, became part of the tournament’s mythology.
In 1984, the Open staged its famous “Super Saturday”, when four matches were packed into a single day and night of tennis: John Newcombe against Stan Smith; a men’s semi-final between Pat Cash and Ivan Lendl; the women’s final between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova; and, finally, the men’s semi-final between John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors. All four matches went to a deciding set. All four. Fans got 12 hours of tennis, or, if you prefer, 979 points, finishing close to midnight. Even without ever repeating such a schedule, the night session only grew in prestige. In 2001, the women’s final was moved into the evening slot for the first time: an all-Williams sisters final won by Venus. In 2016, Arthur Ashe Stadium was fitted with a retractable roof, capable of trapping and amplifying the deafening roar of the crowd inside a closed arena, making the atmosphere even more thunderous. Then, in 2018, night tennis began on Louis Armstrong Stadium too, giving the evening sessions a second stage.
At some point, the other Grand Slam tournaments followed New York’s lead and began playing at night too – although for some of them it took decades to get there. The Australian Open embraced night tennis in 1988, after its move to the new complex on the outskirts of Melbourne. Wimbledon began using the Centre Court roof in 2009, while maintaining its strict local curfew of 11pm. Roland Garros finally introduced night sessions in 2021.
New York got there first. And today the night session is inseparable from the identity of the tournament. It is part of the US Open ritual, part of what makes the tournament feel like New York. Entire trips are planned around it. New Yorkers leave work and take the 7 train all the way to the end of the line, heading towards the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. They walk along the promenade as the daytime crowd slowly filters out: one crowd giving way to another. The same party atmosphere can produce unforgettable moments when the tennis is good enough. This is not Wimbledon’s polite crowd or Roland Garros’s knowledgeable one. The US Open crowd brings an enthusiasm that is unfiltered, chaotic at times, relentlessly loud. It feels unmistakably American. And when the drama on court reaches its peak, there is nowhere more fun to watch a tennis match.
The 2022 tournament was a classic example. In the first week, the atmosphere around Serena Williams’s farewell tour produced the loudest crowd ever heard at a tennis match, an atmosphere that felt more like a football stadium. In the second week came the arrival of a 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, whose inventive shot-making made the crowd gasp and left it in disbelief. New York fans know a superstar when they see one, whether they are watching someone on the way out or someone just arriving. And they know how to celebrate them. The tournament has always been willing to push the night to its limits. On that Super Saturday in 1984, when McEnroe and Connors walked onto court for the final match of the day, it was 7:28pm. “Ridiculous,” McEnroe muttered about the start time, according to journalist Jon Wertheim. That tension between the players, the schedule and the demands of the show has never disappeared. Night tennis is great television. It sells tickets and broadcast rights. But how far can the players be pushed?
McEnroe’s frustration at a 7:28pm start would seem almost absurd today. In 2024, Aryna Sabalenka and Ekaterina Alexandrova began their match at 12:08am, the first match to start after midnight in tournament history, and finished at 1:48am. Plenty of matches have ended later still. For players, who have to go through their recovery routines, shower, speak to the media and get back to their hotels, the sun may already be coming up by the time they go to sleep. But the players are only one part of it. The same goes for camera operators, ball kids, maintenance staff and drivers, to name just a few. Then there are the journalists, staying up late beneath the fluorescent glow of the press room to file their stories before boarding the last shuttles home. A long night for the players becomes a long night for everyone.
The solutions are not simple, though, when a tournament is so committed to playing tennis beneath the stars. In 2023, then event director Stacy Allaster said she had considered bringing the start of the evening session forward by an hour, to 6pm, “but it’s not a realistic option because it’s difficult for New Yorkers to get here even at 7pm”. She did not want to reduce the session from two matches to one, either, because that would be unfair to the fans. These late-night matches test the endurance of the “city that never sleeps”. Who are the fans willing to stay until morning for the chance to see something unforgettable? The rivalry between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, now at the centre of men’s tennis, reached an early peak in 2022, when they played a five-set quarter-final that ended at 2:50am, still the latest finish in tournament history. The crowd thinned out. Those who remained were rewarded with the chance to move down into the better seats, where they eventually got to enjoy one of the greatest matches of the decade. I went home before the match began and watched it in disbelief. I regretted missing it so much that, in the end, I wrote an entire book about their rivalry. There are parties you simply have to attend, or you will regret it forever. The US Open has always been very good at creating those moments.