On Sunday we went to the Winery tour (see previous post). But the day before, we'd actually gone to the Tennis U.S. Open, which was midway through the two weekend tournament. The tournament is held every year in Queens, at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. This is very near the Mets' ballpark, Citi Field (it's the same stop on the NY subway). Charlie had been to the US Open finals the year before - Rafa Nadal won the tournament over Novak Djokovic - but this was Katie's first time. We went for the 4th round on Saturday. The way it works - you can buy tickets to the "Grounds", which gets you into the area and you can watch any of the matches on all the "side" courts. You can also get into the Grandstand, but that is a first-come first-serve basis, and often requires a wait. Next, you could buy tickets to either of the two larger stadiums - either Louis Armstrong, or the gigantic Arthur Ashe. This also gets you the "grounds" admission, too. The Ashe stadium is considered "center court" - so it has the most notable names.
We got there a little before noon, grabbed lunch, and walked around the grounds for a couple of hours. Right outside Arthur Ashe Stadium there is a big bar area where it seemed like lots of people come to hang out and watch the matches on the big screens...reminded us alittle bit of the parties at the big horse races. There are lots of smaller courts along the grounds and it was really neat to be able to see some of the side matches up really close. At one point, we kind of stumbled across a match that featured the #1 seed for women's doubles.
We bought the tickets for the Arthur Ashe stadium for Saturday's daytime matches. This got us the chance to see two tennis legends - Roger Federer in the first match and Serena Williams in the second. Both won their match to move on to the quarterfinals - so it was a neat day where we got to see something that only comes around once a year.
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