Officials will spend more than half a billion dollars to install moveable Wimbledon-style translucent roofs on two stadiums to bring the US Open up to standard, United States tennis bosses announced on Thursday.
The project is set to include a huge roof over the Arthur Ashe showcase stadium plus a second arena with the possibility of being covered in case of rain.
US federation president Dave Haggerty said the roof over the massive showcase court should be operational by 2018, said to be a rather optimistic timetable.
“There will be a roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium,” he said.
The last five years of delayed finals might actually now become a distant memory at the 24,000-capacity stadium.
Haggerty went on to explain that the roof will be able to close in five to seven minutes and will remain closed during the 11-month off-season when nothing happens on the tennis site built on a landfill in a desolate section of Queens.
Specifications for the structure call for an opening of 76 metres square, with the 18,500-square-metre roof itself measuring four times larger than that of Wimbledon’s centre court.
The 12,000-seat Grandstand secondary court will be moved to another location on the grounds and is also set to be covered.
Bad weather has forced the men’s final to be played on a Monday at the last five editions. This year, the US federation just gave in and set the final for Monday anyway, a plan agreed with television interests which will last this year and next.
After that, the event is due to scrap its controversial, decades-long quirky scheduling which denied men’s finalist a day of rest after their matches.
The “super Saturday” plan was hatched in the 1970s by American television and flew in the face of all the other three majors, which play men’s semis on a Friday and the final two days later.
With the New York announcement, only the French Open currently lacks a showcourt roof, with plans to build one over the Chatrier stadium currently held up in legal disputes. The Australian Open is working on its third and Wimbledon covered Centre Court in 2009.