The U.S. Open is Stupid
One of the best tennis matches in years happened last night. Almost no one saw it.
The U.S. Open, for years, has stacked matches on the court (Ashe) with the largest capacity. They also schedule insufficient time between matches if you consider how variable the length between matches will inevitably be.
Yesterday, there was an almost five-hour men's match followed by an almost three-hour women's match--again, on the same court. This meant that the Alcaraz-Shelton match, scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. (already too late), actually started at 11:00 p.m.
Are there any other world-class sporting events that have events starting at 11 p.m.? No, of course not. Not even in other tennis events is it like this.
The match, which was absolutely thrilling, ended at 3:30 a.m. By then, eighteen thousand of the twenty-four thousand people in attendance had left.
In the U.S., only in Alaska and Hawaii did the match end before midnight.
It's such an incredibly easy fix: don't schedule four consecutive matches on the same court when you get to the later rounds (this match was a quarterfinal). The next highest-capacity court (Armstrong) still seats fourteen thousand people.
How about using it?
Also, we're off to the other quarterfinals today. The day session, thank goodness.
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