Is the US Open Worth Going To? The Grounds-Pass Truth

Tennis was never supposed to be my thing. I grew up an Oregon soccer kid, and for the first few of the six years my husband and I lived in New York, the US Open registered as background noise. A thing on TV. Then a friend with a spare grounds pass dragged me out to Flushing Meadows on a random Tuesday in the first week, and I stood two rows back from a top-20 player at Court 17, close enough to hear the string ping and the grunt and the umpire’s chair creak. I’ve gone back nearly every year since. So when people ask me the honest question. Is the US Open worth going to? My answer has a giant asterisk on it.

Yes. It is absolutely worth it. But not the way most first-timers do it, and not for the ticket everyone thinks they need. The version that’s worth it costs a fraction of what people assume, and it’s better tennis than the expensive version. Let me explain.

What the US Open actually is (and where)

The 2026 US Open runs from August 23 through September 13 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, out in Queens. It’s the last of the four Grand Slam tournaments each year and the only one in the United States. Outdoor hard courts, late-summer heat, and a scale that genuinely surprises people. This is not a stadium. It’s a small city of courts spread across a park, with dozens of matches happening at once for most of the two weeks.

The main draw, meaning the matches with the famous names, starts Sunday, August 30. The women’s final lands Saturday, September 12, and the men’s final closes it out Sunday, September 13. That structure matters more than it sounds, because the cheapest, best-value tennis is front-loaded into the first week, and the eye-watering prices cluster around those two final weekends.

The ticket trap. Arthur Ashe Stadium.

Here’s where most people go wrong. They hear “US Open,” they picture Arthur Ashe Stadium under the lights, and they go buy a session ticket for Ashe. Fair enough. It’s the biggest tennis stadium in the world, it holds around 24,000 people, and the night sessions there are a genuine spectacle.

But I will be honest with you. For a first-timer trying to actually watch tennis, Arthur Ashe is often the worst value on the grounds. The cheap Ashe reserved seats (they start around $43 for the earliest rounds, and climb fast) put you so high up that the players look like ants and the court looks like a diagram. You paid to watch a jumbotron in a very loud room. The good Ashe seats, the ones where you can see faces, run into the hundreds or thousands depending on the day and the round. And an Ashe ticket only guarantees you that one stadium plus general admission everywhere else, which brings me to the thing nobody tells you.

Buy a grounds pass instead. Here’s why.

A grounds pass is the cheapest ticket the US Open sells, and it is, no contest, the smartest one. For 2026 they start at $65 at face value, and run up to roughly $135 depending on the day, with the first week cheapest. That gets you into the entire complex to roam freely and watch matches on every court except reserved-seat Arthur Ashe.

And “every court except Ashe” is a much bigger deal than it sounds. Your grounds pass gets you first-come, first-served general admission seating in Louis Armstrong Stadium and Grandstand, two beautiful stadiums in their own right, plus every single field court. Court 17, a sunken 2,800-seat show court that feels like a tennis pit. Grandstand, which holds over 8,000. The field courts numbered up through the teens, where you can literally stand at the fence.

Now the part that changes everything. In the first week, the draw is huge (128 players in each singles bracket), and there aren’t enough marquee courts to hold all the good matches. So ranked players and rising stars get spread across the outer courts constantly. I have watched top-20 seeds, players I’d seen win actual titles on TV, grinding through a first-round match on Court 17 from the second row. No binoculars. No jumbotron. Close enough to see them re-grip and mutter to their box. That is the experience people are chasing when they overpay for Ashe, and the grounds pass hands it to you for sixty-five bucks.

A friend of mine calls this the great US Open secret, and she’s not wrong. The best tennis-watching in the world, at eye level, is the budget option. Foolish to skip it.

The even cheaper move. Fan Week is free.

If your budget is truly zero, this one still blows my mind. The week before the main draw, the grounds are open to the public for free. In 2026, Fan Week runs August 23 through August 29, and it includes the entire qualifying tournament, players fighting for the last spots in the main draw, which is often ferocious, high-stakes tennis, plus featured practice sessions where the biggest stars in the sport hit balls a few feet from you.

You do need a free Fan Access Pass to get in, which you register for through the US Open app (it’s required for everyone 18 and older, and each adult can bring up to five kids). There’s also one extra free day during the main draw itself, an “Open for All Day” on Thursday, September 10, when grounds admission is free again. Eight free days in total across the tournament. For a family, that’s the difference between “we could never afford the US Open” and “we spent an afternoon watching pro tennis for the price of the subway.”

Now for the honest part. Free days are crowded, and the practice schedule for the stars only gets posted the morning of, so there’s a bit of luck and hustle involved. But watching a champion practice from the front row, for nothing, is one of those quiet New York flexes I never get tired of.

How I actually do a grounds-pass day

My formula after too many of these to count. Go in the first week, ideally a weekday. Rounds one and two, roughly the first Monday through Wednesday, are the sweet spot. Cheapest passes, the most matches running at once (I’ve counted play on well over a dozen courts simultaneously), and thinner crowds than the Labor Day weekend crush.

Get there when the gates open, around 11 a.m. for day sessions, and go straight to Grandstand or Louis Armstrong to grab general-admission seats before they fill. Watch a set, then wander. That’s the whole art of it. When a match gets lopsided, you get up and find a better one three courts over. Nobody does this at a normal sporting event and it feels illicit and wonderful.

Pack a refillable water bottle (there are fill stations, and late-August heat in Queens is no joke, I got sunburned to a crisp my first year and learned that one the hard way). Wear a hat. The food inside is expensive and fine, so I usually eat a real meal before or after rather than paying stadium prices for a mediocre lobster roll. And build in time to just stand at a field-court fence and watch qualifying-level players you’ve never heard of play their hearts out. Some of my favorite tennis memories are of complete unknowns.

Getting to Flushing Meadows

Do not drive. Take the train. The 7 line runs straight out to the Mets-Willets Point station, and it’s a one-seat ride from Times Square, Grand Central, Fifth Avenue, or Hudson Yards. From the platform it’s a short walk across the boardwalk to the gates, past the Unisphere, that giant steel globe from the 1964 World’s Fair, which lives in the same park. If you’re coming from farther out, the LIRR Port Washington branch also stops right there during the tournament.

The 7 train itself is half the fun, an elevated line that rattles through Queens with the Manhattan skyline peeling away behind you. It’s one of the more scenic subway rides in the city, and it drops you about as close to the tennis as any stadium in New York gets you to its front door. If you’re mapping out a late-summer trip anyway, it pairs beautifully with everything else worth doing in New York City in August.

What to skip, plainly

Skip the night session at Ashe if it’s your only visit and you actually want to watch tennis. It’s a party, not a viewing experience, unless you’re paying for good seats. Skip the second week if you’re on a budget, prices and crowds both spike as the rounds thin out. Skip the merchandise megastore unless you enjoy paying $50 for a hat. And skip the temptation to plan a rigid schedule. The whole magic of a grounds pass is that you follow the good tennis wherever it pops up.

One honest downside worth naming. If your heart is set on seeing one specific superstar, a grounds pass is a gamble, because that player might be scheduled into Ashe on the day you go, and your pass won’t get you a reserved seat there. If a particular name is the entire point of your trip, check the order of play and buy the right ticket for that court. But if you just love tennis and want to be close to it? Grounds pass, first week, every time.

If you like this kind of honest math on New York’s big-ticket experiences, I’ve done the same gut-check on whether the High Line is worth it, on the Staten Island Ferry (the answer might surprise you), and on Roosevelt Island.

So, is the US Open worth it?

Worth it, yes, wholeheartedly. It’s one of the best things you can do in the city in late summer, and it slots perfectly into that gorgeous stretch when the worst of the humidity is breaking. If you have any flexibility on timing, this is a big part of why I think early September is the best time to visit NYC. Just do the smart version. Buy a grounds pass, go in the first week, take the 7 train, and watch world-class players from arm’s reach on the outer courts instead of squinting at a jumbotron from the rafters. That’s the version that turned a soccer kid from Oregon into someone who plans her late August around a tennis tournament in Queens.

Which court do you always end up parked at? I still swear by Court 17.

Until next time,
Antonina