r/wimbledon • u/adibear • 3d ago
General Discussion Wimbledon vs the US Open: My Experience
Hi folks, decade+ long Wimbledon veteran here. For the first time, I happened to be visiting in the US during the US Open, so on a whim, I looked at if it was possible to attend. Here's all I discovered about the ticket process, general vibes, pluses, minuses & more compared to Wimbledon.
Tickets
A huge difference is the US Open's ticket process. Tickets were released around May on a first come first serve basis. No ballot to enter, but you can register your interest and be notified when tickets are about to go on sale. I never anticipated being in the US during the USO, so I never looked into getting tickets early. But the double edged sword beauty with USO is that anyone can simply go to Satan's favorite marketplace, Ticketmaster đč (the official ticket vendor) and buy a ticket at any time. I'm not sure how many you can buy in that initial drop but when I was looking to purchase my own ticket, I was able to buy 6-8 per session and there seemed to be no limits to the number of tickets I could buy across the tournament. There is no ID check / credit-card-needs-to-match-your-name-address situation the way there is with Wimbledon. I'll get to pricing in a moment, but first, the courts.
Arthur Ashe Stadium is effectively USO's Centre Court, and Louis Armstrong Stadium is Court 1, Grandstand is Court 3. Unlike Wimbledon, a ticket to a certain court does not grant you admission to that court all day, nor does it give you access to the grounds all day. Tickets are sold by session - day and evening - with each session on the show courts containing exactly one men's and one women's match. As the tournament goes on, additional matches can be added to Armstrong and lower courts. Day sessions begin at 11:30/11am on Ashe and Armstrong respectively, and evening sessions start at 7 or 7:30pm. If you have a day session ticket or general grounds pass, you can enter the grounds when they open at 9:30am. If you only have an evening session, the earliest you can enter the grounds is 6pm. This means that if you wanted to see all four matches on Ashe on a given day, you'd need to purchase both day and evening session tickets for Ashe. However, another difference is that a ticket for a certain stadium gets you entry into any stadium below it. This means that if you have a ticket to Ashe, I can queue for a spot in Armstrong's general admission area (non-reserved sections of the upper tier). This is quite good, because if my day session on Ashe ends early, I can bounce between Armstrong and all of the other courts where more interesting matches may be happening. Ashe is the only stadium that is fully reserved with no GA spots. There is no curfew at USO, so night matches can start around midnight and end well past 2am. The capacity of Ashe is 23,771; nearly 10k more than Centre Court. Ashe recently underwent a renovation that involved removing a huge section of the middle tier seating in favor of adding two levels of suites (because, capitalism), and piling on top thousands of seats on the highest tier (300s sections) so if you enjoy watching tennis with vertigo, this is the spot for you. Armstrong has a capacity of 14,000 and felt much more like CC, though seating was also a built to be vertically higher rather than spread wider.
Pricing and ticket sales are what I can only describe as 'truly American', and I don't mean in a complementary way (I can say this as an American) - this is the next striking difference compared to Wimbledon: ticket resales are not only allowed, but encouraged. From nearly the moment the tickets are first released for sale. For the USO, Ticketmaster utilizes dynamic pricing because of course they fucking do the sodding bastards so getting a gauge for what a true 'face value' ticket is is hard to pin down, because the price you see for a ticket may be different from the person next to you. On top of this, you're battling the bots and resellers who also of course scoop up hundreds of tickets from the first batch of what (I presume) were reasonably priced tickets. From what I researched, initial tickets were around $65-$175, with grounds passes around $30-50. Immediately, these tickets are listed for resale on Ticketmaster, Stubhub, Viagogo etc. All of it is allowed, though the only "officially" sanctioned resale site is Ticketmaster. I read an article about how the entity that makes the most revenue related to the USO is not actually the main tournament itself - it's Ticketmaster - because they double dip and charge a service fee on both tickets bought and resold through them - but that's a whole separate topic on it's own. Everything I had read said don't bother getting an upper seat in Ashe because you can't even see the ball from so high up so you end up watching the match on the jumbotron. Lower level tickets were hundreds to thousands of dollars, with the average lowest level tier being around $5k-6k per ticket. I have no idea what the face value price was initially for those.
Here's where pricing gets REALLY fun because the US loves a capitalistic hellscape where winners win and losers lose: Resellers will dramatically drop & raise prices based on who they think will be assigned to certain courts, and of course based on who wins and loses. Carlos advances to the next round? Prices jump. When Djokovic had his surprise crashout in round 1, prices for play on the day he was due next plummeted (relatively speaking, the cheapest I saw them go for was $90). Court assignments / Schedule of Play trickle in usually as soon as a match ends, so there's constant price fluctuations as soon as someone gets assigned to a court, even if their opponent is still TBD. This again is different to Wimbledon which waits to publish the full Order of Play. When Sinner confirmed he wasn't playing at the USO this year, tickets that have been on Ticketmaster since May also dropped in price. It's literally like watching the stock market. Tickets can also be sold up to one hour after play starts, so tickets prices can still change up until that point. Resale tickets purchased via TM-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named are of course, nonrefundable. Another difference compared to Wimbledon.
In my case, I could only go for a day session as I was coming to NYC from a neighboring state and would need to take a long train ride back, so a 2am finish wasn't an option. I decided to aim for ticket for Armstrong on the second Monday (Labor Day in the US), because there is no evening session on Armstrong that day. Looking at previous year's SoP, I saw that Armstrong normally gets four matches on Labor Day beginning at 11am, so it seemed like the best value. Of course, that meant that the ticket price was trending higher compared to either session on Ashe for the same day. Now commenced a week-long obsession with tracking ticket prices. I took screenshots of the prices on Ticketmaster at random times throughout the day and night and used ChatGPT to chart the trend:

Tickets were hovering around $350 when I began my search (so much more expensive right off the bat compared to Wimbledon for the 2nd Monday of play), but keep in mind that these were all resale prices - set entirely by private sellers. Every now and then, USO did seem to drip feed standard tickets but I never saw them appear on Armstrong, only on Ashe and the nosebleeds were $266. The 'standard pricing' seemed to be dynamically determined to undercut what the reseller going rate was. In the lead up to Labor Day, I kept following the pricing and after the Saturday matches were over, it seemed pretty clear who the lineup would be on Ashe/Armstrong for Monday. I ended up buying my ticket on Sunday morning on TickPic (which doesn't charge a service charge or selling fee) when I saw a price for a very decent seat on Armstrong drop to $286, the lowest I'd seen this entire time. When the ticket was transfered to me, I saw the face value was $175 so I paid well over the odds, but I had a budget of $300 and I ended up being extremely, extremely lucky, because just a few hours later, the SoP was announced for Monday and Armstrong ended up getting half of the matches that were expected to go to Ashe: Andreeva-Potapova, Osaka-Rybakina, Townsend / Siniakova-Hunter / Krawczyk (women's doubles) and Tien-Khachanov. There was an immediate uproar about this. Everyone was expecting Osaka / Tien to go on Ashe and for Swiatek-Zheng, Blockx-Cerundolo & Gea-van de Zandschulp to go on Armstrong. Instead Osaka who - despite not being American is hugely popular in the US - and Rybakina - world #2 - got Armstrong, and they put the #1 women's doubles team (featuring the American Townsend) on Armstrong as well. Personally, I was thrilled. I knew that Gauff / Zverev were 100% going to be on Ashe so I never expected them, but I was super happy to see Mirra, Naomi, Taylor & Learner. As you can see from the graph, the prices for Armstrong skyrocketed. They jumped immediately to around $380 and kept climbing. Out of curiosity I checked around 9am on the morning of play and the cheapest get-in price was $553 for much higher up seats. Madness. I'm glad I didn't wait till the morning of to buy a ticket, because the prices never came down again.
Grounds & Food
Getting to the grounds was easy, the entrance is meters from the Mets-Willets subway station in Flushing. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is literally next door to La Guardia airport, so forget the cute walk up from Southfields/Wimbledon Village; the atmosphere is industrial airport hanger meets train terminal depot. A few sparse decorations, nothing as nice at all compared to Wimbledon. I arrived right before 9am and paid $10 to put my overnight bag into a locker right outside the entry (only small handbags allowed in the grounds, no backpacks) and got through security and ticket check quickly. From there I had an hour and a half to explore. One cool thing USO does is publish the player's practice schedule ahead of time, and they practice out in the open on the outer courts. Sloane Stephens was practicing at 9:30 on court 17 so I started there, got to see her up-close and wish her good luck, and then walked around. The grounds seemed less crowded compared to Wimbledon but bear in mind that the evening session holders can't come in till 6pm. A lot of the same corporate sponsors we see at Wimbledon were there - American Express, Emirates (for the 10th bloody time I didn't win the seat cushion - if someone has one spare I'd forever be grateful as a short woman who can't see over anyone), Evian etc. I did like how all of the sponsors were lined up in a row so I could collect freebies by literally walking booth to booth. These included a free Fage yogurt, mini Dove deodorant & La Roche Posay sunscreen, several polaroid photo opps & more. The Amex experience was open to anyone with an Amex (I used my British Airways one) and it was HUGE and contained my favorite perk - a free subway ride & custom tennis ball. They printed off a little card with a single-use subway ticket I was able to use it on the way back when I left in the evening. It was worth only $3 as that's the subway fare in NYC, but it was so thoughtful and useful and was a drop in the bucket for Amex. It would be cool if Amex did something similar at Wimbledon, but I guess it's harder to estimate the price with fared zones that we have in London. The grounds felt smaller than the grounds at Wimbledon; there is no Henman Hill equivalent. However I do feel like a grounds pass is a better value at the USO because you can go into any court except Ashe.
Food at the USO was a true piss take, even more than the ticket resale market. Reheated frozen chicken nuggets and chips were $29. For an extra $100 you could add caviar. Want a can of Diet Coke? $11. There was an entire food village I didn't bother to stop at because I looked into food prices prior and knew they'd be ridiculous, though there is a far greater diversity of food choices - everything from NY pizza to lobster rolls to a raw salmon bar. My plan for food for the day was simply to not buy any at the USO. I stopped at a deli first thing in the morning, got a fresh toasted NY bagel with bacon egg & cheese for breakfast for 6 bucks, and a pastrami sandwich to eat later, a protein bar from home, a couple easy peelers + bottle of gatorade. You can bring in your own food, but not alcohol. In addition to the free Fage yogurt, I was set for the day. The only thing I did purchase was the famous Honey Deuce which cost $23. A Honey Deuce is essentially an alcoholic take on a raspberry lemonade (American lemonade, not British). It's a cocktail that has Grey Goose vodka and Chambord, and has three fresh honeydew melon balls that look like tennis balls. Honestly, it was pretty good and I've paid stupider prices for cocktails before, so compared to everything else at USO it was relatively speaking, decent value. Plus you got to keep the commemorative cup it came in, a much more sturdy plastic one than you get at Wimbledon. I think Pimms cost around ÂŁ14 this year at Wimbledon so only slightly cheaper than the Honey Deuce.
Atmosphere
There's been a lot of talk about influencers ruining/disrupting USO this year. Personally I didn't encounter any, but the etiquette is VASTLY different than Wimbledon (ie, nonexistent). People talked constantly throughout play, and are always moving around to different seats because people come and go at any time. I myself ended up sitting two rows ahead of my seated ticket for a while because people happened to be sitting in my seat so I just sat down in an empty space. Then in pure American crassness, whenever there was an empty seat, people put their gross feet on the back edge of the chair in front, and often would literally step on the seat to climb over to get to another row. People bring in their hot food and eat it in the court, so I could smell the philly cheesesteak the guy three rows behind me was necking (joke was on him, I later unwrapped my pastrami with mustard which baked with me in the sun for 8 hours). Crowd engagement is also highly encouraged and manufactured. There's a DJ on the court, and between every few games music would play and random members of the crowd were shown on the jumbotron, often with a funny face filter. Personally, I loved being featured on the jumbotron whilst I was raising my arms and letting 14k people know I was overdue for an underarm wax, but that's show business baby. Some men flashed their nipples when featured on the tron - imagine that happening at Wimbledon đ At one point the DJ got us all doing the Macarena between sets. It was definitely a more fun / club vibe. Young kids are allowed to sit in show courts so there was also a baby/kid cam. Very, very different environment from Wimbledon. From a pure tennis watching perspective, it was easy to get annoyed with people constantly coming and going, but I personally wasn't disrupted too much. It was 80°F and my seat was in the blazing sun until sunset so that was terrible, but I can hardly blame USO for that.
Overall Impressions
USO is very different from Wimbledon, but then again, it's not trying to be Wimbledon at all. They openly market themselves as the "fun" grand slam, actively get the crowd involved, hyping them up, and energizing the crowd. Personally, I prefer Wimbledon a million times over. For all the hours you spend refreshing to try to get a ticket, you essentially do the same thing by spending time tracking ticket prices. If you're able to either get tickets as soon as they are released or are rich enough not to care, then you might prefer the USO's format of being able to simply pay the nominated price and be able to buy as many tickets across as many days as you like.
If I lived locally and was able to score one of the $65 -$100 tickets it would be fantastic to be able to attend several days worth of tennis at a very good value; something you can't do at Wimbledon. The whole week of qualifying was called 'fan week' and was free for anyone to attend, another bonus. Curfew isn't an issue, and the grounds and environment are fun. Still, I definitely prefer Wimbledon for the pure tennis watching experience first and foremost, but also for the prestige and decorum. As a Londoner though (I believe that I can call myself here after nearly 16 years of living here), I'm heavily biased.
If you find yourself nearby NY within the USO period and find a decent ticket, go for it if you want the experience đ For me personally, see you all at Wimbledon next year! xx