What is the U.S. Open? The sport’s chaos magnet

By Owen Lewis

Consider the thing that does not know what it is. The United States. Most people in their 20s. The humble croffle. A tennis event might not be high on that list—make the draw, sell the tickets, let the players scythe each other down till there’s a winner; it’s a pretty simple recipe. But on any given day, the U.S. Open is also a lifestyle brand, an alcohol hotbed, an oven disguised as a park, a gathering of the famed, the site of a short-lived dating show that had nothing to do with tennis but was nonetheless promoted on the Open’s YouTube channel, and, a few spots further down the list, one of the biggest tennis tournaments on earth. READ ON