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Most people who tell me they want to go to the US Open have one image in their head. Night session, Arthur Ashe, lights on, a crowd that sounds like a stadium concert. It’s a wonderful image. It’s also about a fifth of what the tournament actually is.

The US Open runs for roughly three weeks, and the two halves of it are so different that treating them as one event is how people end up disappointed by a trip they spent real money on. So here is the whole thing, laid out the way I’d explain it to you on a call.

The first half: Fan Week

The week before the main draw is called Fan Week, and admission to the grounds is free. Not discounted. Free, for seven straight days.

During that week you get qualifying matches, which are genuinely competitive tennis played by people fighting for their careers, and open practice sessions, which is where it gets interesting. There is no stadium tier, no barrier, no hospitality level. You stand at a practice court and a top-ten player is fifteen feet away, working on a serve.

There’s also a kids’ day that opens the week, and a mixed doubles championship that now runs as its own event with an expanded field, which has quietly become one of the strangest and best things on the calendar.

One thing to be clear about, because it catches people out: free grounds admission is not the same as free everything. The grounds, the practice courts, and qualifying are free with a pass. The marquee evenings in the main stadium during that week, the mixed doubles and whatever exhibition they’ve put together, are separately ticketed. Turning up on a free pass expecting to watch those is a specific and avoidable disappointment.

Who I’d send: anyone who wants to watch tennis rather than watch an event. And, honestly, anyone bringing children. The grounds are open, the crowds are thinner, and nobody is asking a nine-year-old to sit still through a three-hour fifth set.

The one piece of admin: adults need a free Fan Access Pass, which lives in the tournament app. It costs nothing, it takes about a minute, and it catches people out.

The second half: the main draw

Then the real tournament starts, and it splits again.

Week one is the best value in tennis. Twelve courts run at once. You can see six matches in a day if you want to, and half of them will feature players nobody has heard of yet, which is the fun of it. If you’re traveling with family, the first weekend of the main draw is the sweet spot, because day sessions run from around midday to late afternoon rather than finishing after midnight.

Week two is the one from the photographs. The draw narrows, everything moves into the main stadium, and the night sessions become the thing people mean when they say they went to the Open. Usually two marquee singles matches under the lights.

Both are excellent. They are not the same trip, and they don’t call for the same seats, the same hotel, or the same number of days off.

Where you sit matters more than which day

This is the part I spend the most time on with clients, because it’s the part that’s genuinely hard to research.

Arthur Ashe is the big one. It’s the largest tennis stadium in the world, it’s where the televised matches are, and by the second week it’s where everything worth watching has ended up.

Louis Armstrong is the one I’d point you to first. It runs official main-draw matches with genuinely top players, in a smaller room that simply feels better to sit in, at a materially lower number. What you give up is the very top of the draw, the top five seeds on each side. That is the entire trade, and for most people it’s a good one. The tennis is real, the atmosphere is better, and you’re closer to it.

A grounds pass gets you everything except Arthur Ashe, on a first-come basis. It used to be the obvious value play, and this year it stopped being obvious: prices climbed enough that the tennis press spent the summer calling them scandalous, and the resale market has pushed them further still. It is still a genuinely good first week, when twelve courts are running and the outer courts hold the best tennis on the grounds. It buys much less in the second, for the obvious reason: once the draw narrows, the matches move into the stadium you can’t get into. Price one against a Louis Armstrong seat before you assume it’s the economical choice.

If this is the kind of thing you want to know before you book a trip, The Tennis Edit is where I write it down. It goes out a few times a year, only about tennis.

What hospitality actually buys you

Nobody explains this, so here it is plainly.

Hospitality at the Open is not a seat upgrade. It’s sold as a package that pairs a courtside seat in Arthur Ashe with a club you can disappear into between matches. So you aren’t really buying a better sightline. You’re buying a different day. Somewhere to go between matches, food and drink handled, and no twenty-minute concourse line at exactly the moment you don’t want one.

The clubs are not equivalent, and this is where it gets genuinely confusing. The Blue Room is the top tier: courtside in Ashe, a seated table, plated courses, an all-inclusive bar. The Club is also courtside in Ashe, with a buffet and chef stations. The Overlook is a different animal, a club out on the grounds between two of the outer courts rather than a seat in the main stadium, and Overlook Plus adds the premium bar and a seat in the expanded courtside bowl. Above and alongside all of that sit suites, a lounge that only opens for the semifinals and finals, and a handful of courtside packages.

Which is a long way of saying: if someone offers you “hospitality” without telling you exactly which of those they mean, that’s the question to ask. The word does almost no work on its own.

One more thing worth knowing, because it changes the timing. Arthur Ashe’s full premium renovation debuts in 2027, and this year is the transition. Nine new courtside clubs, two dedicated suite levels, and seven bunker suites arrive next year. What’s on offer this season is not what will be on offer next season, which is a good reason to have someone watching it on your behalf rather than checking a ticketing site once a year.

Hospitality for the second week is the piece that goes furthest ahead. That isn’t a sales line, it’s just how the event works: a finite number of those rooms exist, and the people who go every year book them the way people book Wimbledon debentures. If the final is the trip you want, that conversation starts early in the year, not late.

The practical things that catch people out

Your tickets will not arrive until a few days before you travel. E-tickets typically transfer somewhere between one and three days out, sometimes the week prior. This is normal. It is also the single most common source of panic I see, and knowing it in advance turns an anxious week into a fine one.

US Open tickets are transferable and not name-specific, so if someone in your party changes, that’s manageable. Worth knowing, because it is emphatically not true of every major. Roland Garros, for instance, is name-specific, high-security, and requires passports at the gate.

Getting there is a transit decision, and it’s simpler than people think. The tennis is in Flushing Meadows, not Manhattan. The Long Island Rail Road runs straight out to the gates from both Penn Station and Grand Central, and the ride is about nineteen minutes from either one, which is quicker than the subway. What that means in practice is that most good Manhattan hotels land in the same forty-minute band, and proximity to Queens is not a sensible reason to choose one neighborhood over another. Choose the block you want your evenings in.

One detail nobody mentions: the railroad station at the tennis center is not step-free. If anyone in your party needs it to be, the subway stop is accessible during major events, and there’s a specific way to route it. That is the kind of thing that decides a day and never appears in a hotel listing.

What to wear

There’s no dress code, which is exactly why it matters.

What works: tailored linen, a midi skirt, wide-leg trousers, a crisp collar, white and navy, loafers, good sunglasses.

What doesn’t: athletic wear, which reads as tourist rather than player. And any heel you wouldn’t want to take down a steep stadium stair, because the stairs are steeper than they look on television.

Day sessions are long and almost entirely unshaded. Dress for sun the way you would for a day on a boat, because that’s closer to the reality than most people expect.

The etiquette, which is easy

Applaud after the point, never during the rally. This is the one that marks you, and it’s the only one that really matters.

Applaud both players. A great shot is a great shot.

Stay in your seat until the changeover. Ushers will hold you at the top of the stairs, and they are right to.

No flash, no phone calls, and nothing crinkly unwrapped mid-point.

None of it is difficult. All of it is noticed.

One tradition worth the line

The Honey Deuce is the tournament’s cocktail: vodka, lemonade, raspberry liqueur, and honeydew balls cut to look like tennis balls. It was invented in 2007, and they sold more than 738,000 of them last year alone.

But the drink isn’t really the point. It arrives in a commemorative glass listing past champions, and you keep it. People bring them home and line them up on a shelf by year, and that shelf is a better souvenir than anything in the shop.

Buy it for the glass. Enjoy the drink on the way.

So which trip is yours?

If you want to watch tennis, go the first week, and consider going before the main draw even starts.

If you want the night that ends up in the story you tell, go the second week, sit somewhere that makes the day easy, and start that conversation early.

If you’re bringing family, the first week, day sessions, and a hotel with room to spread out.

And if you’re not sure, that’s genuinely the most useful place to start a conversation from.

Ready to be there instead of watching it? Start your trip inquiry here.

This year’s dates

2026: Fan Week ran August 23 to 29, with free grounds admission all seven days. The main draw runs August 30 to September 13, and there’s one more free-admission day in the second week, on Thursday, September 10.