COLUMN - The U.S. Open starts today, yes, I mean qualifying

There is a temptation to think of U.S. Open qualifying as the thing that happens before the U.S. Open. Don’t. For serious tennis fans, one of the best tournaments of the year starts today.

There are 128 players in the women’s qualifying draw and another 128 in the men’s. Sixteen from each will make it through. To get there, they have to win three matches in four days. And have you actually looked at these draws? Zheng Qinwen is playing qualifying. Bianca Andreescu is playing qualifying. On the men’s side, Grigor Dimitrov and Kei Nishikori are trying to fight their way into the main draw. Those are not obscure names hoping for a nice week in New York. Those are Grand Slam champions, finalists, Olympic medalists and players who have spent considerable portions of their careers near the very top of the sport.

Then look beyond the names everybody recognizes. The U.S. Open says qualifying fields traditionally feature players ranked roughly 100 to 250 in the world, along with young players coming up, established players trying to come back and others who are a couple of wins away from changing the trajectory of their season.

Put that group into a 128-player women’s draw and tell me this isn’t a terrific tennis tournament in its own right. It is. Frankly, if you detached the women’s qualifying tournament from the words “U.S. Open” and put essentially this field somewhere else on the calendar, we would happily treat it as a very good standalone professional event. The depth is easily comparable to what makes a strong WTA 125 so much fun to follow, except the field is enormous and the stakes are considerably higher.

That last part matters. There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about qualifying. Win. Then win again. Then do it one more time. Do that and you are in the U.S. Open. Lose anywhere along the way and you aren’t. No complicated narratives are required. Nobody needs to manufacture drama. For many players, making the main draw means meaningful prize money, ranking opportunity and a chance to play one of the biggest matches of their lives. For a young player, it can be the week people first learn her name. For a veteran, it can be one more chance to prove there is something left.

And for us? It is four days of fantastic tennis. It also arrives at exactly the right moment. The North American summer has been building toward this for weeks, and after a terrific Cincinnati tournament that concluded Sunday, the sport has finally reached the part of the calendar where virtually everything feels important.

Cincinnati felt like a reset after the rather underwhelming shared Canadian swing in Montréal and Toronto. The tennis was better. The atmosphere was infinitely better. The matches felt consequential. Arthur Fils capped the men’s tournament by beating Frances Tiafoe for his first Masters 1000 title, while the, as usual, all around superior women’s event delivered an all-American final between Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, the former of the two good friend with a straight-sets win over the latter And now we get this gem. Qualifying. Then the U.S. Open.

If you love tennis, I’m not sure there is a better three-week stretch on the calendar. Which, naturally, brings me to one of my favorite complaints. This should be the end. Not literally today, of course. We have three glorious weeks ahead of us. But when the last ball is struck at the U.S. Open, professional tennis should essentially shut down until the ATP and WTA Finals. I have written this before and will undoubtedly write it again because the calendar remains ridiculous.

The U.S. Open should be the line in the sand. Four majors. The clay season. Wimbledon. The North American hard-court summer. New York. That is a season. Instead, when everyone is exhausted and half the tour seems to have something taped, wrapped, strained or inflamed, we ask the players to pack their bags and keep going for another couple of months.

Why? By that point, the emotional arc of the season is over. The biggest trophies have been awarded. Players have been crossing continents since January. Bodies are breaking down. Withdrawals pile up. Everybody talks endlessly about player health while maintaining a calendar practically designed to undermine it. Even this week gives us another reminder. Jannik Sinner withdrew from the U.S. Open because of a knee injury after a season in which he had gone 44-3.

Tennis does not need more tennis. It needs more tennis that matters. That is precisely why U.S. Open qualifying is so good. Every match matters. Every set matters. Watch somebody win a second-round qualifying match this week and look at the reaction. She hasn’t won a major. She hasn’t even reached the main draw yet. She is one match away. That is enough. There is desperation in these matches that you simply don’t get during a random tournament in October featuring players desperately trying to finish a season that should already have ended. And there is another reason qualifying deserves more attention: this is where you can actually watch tennis.

Not celebrity tennis. Not luxury-suite tennis. Not an event where the people sitting closest to the court occasionally seem surprised that a match has broken out. Tennis. Court 7. Court 11. Court 14. Stand a few feet away and watch someone ranked 143rd in the world hit a forehand and you are reminded of something television sometimes obscures: these people are unbelievably good.

The margins separating the player ranked 140th from the player ranked 40th can be frighteningly small. One hot week, one favorable matchup, one breakthrough and suddenly somebody you watched in qualifying is playing under the lights. That possibility hangs over every court this week. To many people, the U.S. Open doesn’t begin until Sunday, August 30. I disagree.

It begins today. We just finished Cincinnati. We get four days of qualifying featuring hundreds of players with their seasons and, in some cases, careers hanging on every match. Then comes two weeks in New York. This is the peak of the tennis year. Afterward, the sport will once again refuse to take the hint and continue playing tournaments deep into the fall because apparently tennis believes an offseason is a character flaw. We can complain about that later. For now, forget that qualifying is supposed to be an appetizer. It is a terrific tournament all by itself. And it starts today. Enjoy, my friends.