US Open (tennis)
US Open (tennis)
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US Open (tennis)

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US Open (tennis)

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. Since the start of the Open Era of tennis in 1968, the event has been open to both amateur and professional players.

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. The tournament originally took place in Newport, Rhode Island from its inception until 1914. 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, revised 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.

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