Arthur Ashe Stadium is a tennis stadium located in the Queens borough of New York City. As part of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, it is the main stadium of the US Open tennis tournament, the fourth and final Grand Slam tennis tournament of the calendar year — and is the largest tennis-specific stadium in the world (by capacity), with a capacity of 23,771.
Located within Flushing Meadows-Corona Park — a reclaimed site that had previously served as a worlds fair site, prior to that Manhattans coal ash dump and prior to that a natural wetland — the original stadium design had not included a roof. After suffering successive years of event delays from inclement weather, a new lightweight retractable roof was completed in 2016.
The stadium is named after Arthur Ashe, winner of the 1968 inaugural US Open, the first in which professionals could compete.[2]
Opening in 1997, the facility replaced Louis Armstrong Stadium as the primary venue for the tournament. The stadium, which cost $254 million to construct, features 22,547 individual seats, 90 luxury suites, five restaurants and a two-level players lounge, making it by far the largest tennis-only venue in the world. Like the other 32 courts in the facility, it has a DecoTurf cushioned acrylic surface. Located near Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, the two facilities share the Mets–Willets Point stops on the New York City Subways IRT Flushing Line (7 <7> trains) and the Long Island Railroads Port Washington Branch.
On August 25, 1997, the stadium opened, hosting the US Open, with Whitney Houston singing One Moment in Time during the stadiums inauguration ceremonies and dedicating the performance to Ashe and the new stadium.[3]
On July 19, 2008, the stadium hosted the first ever regular season WNBA game to be played outdoors when the WNBA Indiana Fever beat the host New York Liberty, 71–55.[4] The game served as a fundraising event for breast cancer research.
The facility features a Hawk-Eye electronic system which allows tennis