From Dogs to Djokovic, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center Has Seen It All

The USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, has been home to some of the most memorable matches and players in the history of professional tennis. You would be hard-pressed to find one player in the modern era that never either won a U.S. Open men’s or women’s tennis championship or, at the very least, goes down in history as a valiant runner-up.

With all of the victors that have raised trophies on the court of Arthur Ashe Stadium, this month saw a different type of champion —  Sage, a miniature poodle who won the 148th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show last Tuesday night, culminating several days of competition that went to the dogs … literally, as Westminster’s green carpet was rolled out in Ashe Stadium and the 40-acre grounds at the National Tennis Center for the second year in a row.

“As a venue, whether a stadium or arena and you do repeat shows or similar shows, one concert to the next, you’ll have a lot of similarities,” said Chris Studley, managing director for events at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. “Now, to understand the operations of a dog show is unlike anything else. Year two has gotten a lot easier to us in terms of how people come in and come out. With 2,500 dogs on-site, it’s a little different.”

For most of its history, Westminster was held at Madison Square Garden. It moved to the suburbs of Tarrytown for two years and was held outside during the pandemic before last year coming to the National Tennis Center for the first time. This year’s event, the 148th annual Dog Show, featured dogs from all 50 states in four separate competitions.

Given the size of the competition with dogs, handlers and assorted equipment, tents are erected throughout the complex for grooming before the show or as holding areas before competition begins. “It would be akin to our player locker rooms,” Studley said except “they’re doggie locker rooms.”

Whether with tented areas on practice courts and other activations — the South Plaza was set up with a 27,000-gallon (102,200-liter) pool for a canine dock-diving demonstration — there was something nearly everywhere you looked.

“The way it was built out you have dog rings on one court, and you see on TV we have three rings going at one time depending on what they’re hosting,” Studley said. “We work on understanding how people will want to sit and take in the event in trying to make the best experience for people that do come out.”

Besides hosting one of tennis’s Grand Slam tournaments and now Westminster, the National Tennis Center has been trying to position itself in recent years as a flexible event venue. It has welcomed AEW wrestling in fall for the past three years and in 2019 it hosted the Fortnite World Cup Finals, an event Studley said came out of working with New York City Tourism + Conventions.

“Fortnite is a totally different demographic compared to a tennis fan, a much younger audience and much different in anything that I was used to,” Studley said. “You learn a lot about it and what their behaviors are. From a venue perspective, you want to know how long people are going to be in their seats — in a hockey game, you don’t see people get up unless it’s intermission. In Fortnite, you didn’t know how long people would want to be away from the action.”

And through Fortnite and other events, it brings in fans that may never have been in the National Tennis Center before and “people say ‘wow, this is pretty neat. I’d like to see what this is like for the U.S. Open,’” Studley said. “It’s helped us cultivate more tennis fans through hosting every other event.”

More than a decade ago, the WNBA’s New York Liberty played on Ashe Stadium against the Indiana Fever. St. John’s coach Rick Pitino has publicly raised the idea of having the Red Storm play Duke at Ashe Stadium in the future as well.

“We would love to host a college basketball game,” Studley said, admitting one of the challenges involved in basketball during the winter would be exposure to the elements around the concourse areas. “Making sure we can offer the right experiences is the goal. When the Dog Show called, that was all new for us and got everybody excited. … I was just blown away by the people that can come to the campus and then discover us.”

And that’s not even factoring in commercial filming the venue also hosts, let alone a busy graduation schedule for high schools and colleges in the region, which while not sports-related has the advantage of keeping the complex in operational shape.

“It’s like parking your car after you drive it for three weeks and you don’t get into it again for a year,” Studley said. “It’s not good for your building. Hosting all these other events allow us to get the back of house operations up and running longer. We’re able to wake the building up in the spring sooner than we would have. It also enables us to bring in staff to work in a little bit longer to the season and get acclimated to the site.”

And as other events continue to come and go and the U.S. Open continues to grow, the venue continues to enjoy the glow of the Westminster Dog Show and its star attractions.

“Who doesn’t get happy when you’re around dogs,” Studley said. “These are the most well-trained dogs in the world, the most beautiful dogs in the world. You see places where they bring dogs in to cheer people up and here we are surrounded by them. It’s fantastic.”