To reach the last row of Section 323 in Arthur Ashe Stadium — one of the highest vantage points from which to watch U.S. Open matches — is something of a marathon.
It starts off easy with a quick flight of stairs, followed by three escalator rides. (There are stairs but it’s best to pace yourself.) From there, fans must trudge through a crowded promenade level that gets tighter when lines for gift shops and concession stands collide.
The final ascent is a flight of nine steps, then a turn, followed by another six steps, another turn and then a heart-pumping 71 steps to Row Z.
But once at the top, fans have two expansive views: before them, a match unfolding on Arthur Ashe, and behind them, an unbroken landscape of New York City, with planes touching down or taking off from La Guardia Airport, and trains passing through Mets-Willets Point station and Citi Field, home of the Mets.
Courtside, fans are expected to be quieter during play, keeping chatter to a minimum. But it’s much more relaxed in the upper tiers of Arthur Ashe, and that’s part of the draw for some who find that the nosebleeds have their own kind of luxury. Fans chat about the match while enjoying the breeze and shade in between sips of beer and Honey Deuces, the tournament’s signature drink.
“One thing I like about Row Z is you can actually talk up here without disrupting the player,” said William Robinson, 27, a financial analyst originally from New Zealand who, three Heinekens in, was cheering on an Australian player during a night match last weekend.
And though the seats in the highest rows may be some of the farthest from the court, they also offer some of the most accessible ticket prices. Depending on the round of the tournament, resale tickets at the top of Arthur Ashe — in the upper rows of the 300 level — range between $100 and $500 a seat. On courtside, some seats cost over $8,000 for the men’s semifinal on Friday night.
“I don’t like sitting up here, but it’s cheap, it’s affordable, for a casual fan,” said Nick Gill, 29, of Woodbury, N.J. Seated next to Mr. Robinson, Mr. Gill, who also works in finance and was enjoying his fourth Honey Deuce, had struck up a conversation with his neighbor, though the two men were rooting for opposing players.
A cheap seat in Ashe is also a useful tournament hack, many fans said, since it allows for general admission — on a first-come, first serve basis — to other matches throughout the grounds.
On Friday, during the much-hyped match between the Americans Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, the top rows of the stadium — a 236,600 square-foot venue that holds nearly 24,000 fans — looked to be half-empty.
Down below, most of the courtside seats were taken, and the atmosphere was tense. But the mood up top was relaxed, as tennis fans, seemingly undaunted by the distance between them and the court, zeroed in on the action, with plenty of elbow room and leg space.
Andrea and Cristina Rodriguez, sisters who live in Forest Hills, Queens, said it was their annual tradition to come to the U.S. Open every Friday before Labor Day Weekend. They always sit in the nosebleeds, and this year they were in Row Y.
“I feel like I’m in one of the boxes,” said Andrea, a textile designer. “We are very alone, we have a lot of space. People are very, very nice. We can really see and watch the game. It’s just fabulous.”
“I’m in heaven,” said Cristina, who works for a lighting design company.
Also watching the all-American match from the top of Arthur Ashe on Friday afternoon was Marissa Kornblau, a therapist, who had come in for the day from Chappaqua, N.Y., with her two daughters, Lexie, 12, and Maya, 6.
Maya looked like she was done for the day, as she curled up into her chair and grew quiet. But Lexie was still buzzing from seeing her favorite player, Coco Gauff, last year’s women’s singles champion.
“No one really blocks you up here,” Lexie said. “And you can see the skyline. It’s pretty.”
This year though, Lexie and other fans enjoying the view from up top have had to contend with a new policy that allows people to move more freely throughout the stadiums.
Previously, fans would have had to wait until players switch sides of the court to take their seats, and those waits could take a while if a game went long.
The new policy means that people can leave their seats in the middle of the point, even if it means disrupting someone else’s view of a match.
Enforcement of rules about leaving seats has always been more lax in the upper tiers, but the new policy seems to have encouraged even more movement. In the lower bowls of Arthur Ashe and other stadiums across the grounds, ushers still manage the movement of fans to avoid disrupting players on the court.
This year, the Australian Open made a similar change that allowed fans to move freely between games. Andrea Rodriguez said she had an issue with the relaxing of the rules.
“I liked it better with more security, because there was more respect for the game, more respect for the match, more respect for the spectators,” she said. “You could watch and nobody could interrupt.”
Other fans said they didn’t mind the extra commotion or a chatty crowd.
“Look, until now, the players insisted on this being like a lecture in a university,” said Yair Givoni, 75, of Israel, who had tickets for all 14 days of the tournament. “In football, the crowd is noisy. In basketball, the crowd is noisy.”
Perhaps one of the better perks about the nosebleeds is the shade they offer, especially during the height-of-day matches.
Lucas Mazzei, 27 of Niagara Falls, Canada, was visiting the U.S. Open for the first time last week when temperatures rose into the upper 80s. He had a seat closer to the action in Arthur Ashe, but with the sun beating down, he decided to move to higher ground, opting for shade over a better view.
“I don’t mind it up here,” he said. “You can see everything pretty clearly.”
Inside Arthur Ashe on Friday, Julio Santos, 26, of Orlando, Fla., took in the view from the heights of the stadium.
“I prefer the top,” he said, adding that he likes to sit up high at football games, too. “It’s great because you get the aerial view of everything.”
Mr. Santos’s girlfriend, Noemis Marrero, 26, of Orlando, taking in her first tennis match, also was a fan of the shade.
“It’s a little breezy,” she said, “which is not a bad thing.”
Not everyone was content to be in Row Z.
“It’s just a disaster,” said Jennifer Shalhoub, a client associate at Merrill Lynch who was pregnant and due in two days.
She and her husband, who come to the Open every year and usually sit closer to the court, wanted to see Novak Djokovic play one more time before she gave birth. The couple, both 35 and from Edgewater, N.J, had bought same-day tickets closer to the court on StubHub, but the transaction hadn’t gone through. As a consolation, the service had offered them replacement tickets in Row Z.
The couple was making the best of it, they said, but Ms. Shalhoub had to pause to catch her breath halfway up the final steps to get to their seats.
“The ambiance is great,” she said. “It kind of sucks I can’t have a Honey Deuce but I’m having a Heineken 0.0.” (The 0.0 is non-alcoholic.)
They’d also adjusted to the new sight lines, too. “It’s not bad except for the perception that there’s nobody behind us,” Mr. Shalhoub said. “If there were 500 more rows behind us, I’d be like, ‘These are amazing seats.’ But because it’s the last row, it makes me feel like I’m in … the last row.”
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