The US Open Series is the six-week summer tennis "season" linking 10 ATP Tour and Sony Ericsson WTA Tour tournaments together. The Series leads to the US Open. It is often referred to as the U.S. or North American hard court season.
It was organized in 2004 as a way to focus more attention on American tennis tournaments by getting more of them on domestic television. Until 2004, most summer North American tournaments were not on television, the exceptions being the highly televised ATP Masters Series events in Canada and Cincinnati.
The eight non-Masters tournaments now enjoy about 50 hours of television combined -- about two hours on each day of their final weekends, chiefly on ESPN2, which is where ESPN shows its tennis programming. NBC (The Indianapolis Tennis Championships), CBS, and The Tennis Channel also cover portions of The Series. Canada and Cincinnati continue to be televised from beginning to end, with approximately 60 hours of television time between them.
Players earn points according to their results in the events; points awarded at ATP Master Series and WTA Tier I events are doubled. The male and female player with the highest point totals each earn double the prize money at the U.S. Open, players with the second highest point totals increase their prize money by 50%, and players with the third highest point totals receive a 25% increase. Lleyton Hewitt and Lindsay Davenport were the top point-getters in 2004, Andy Roddick and Kim Clijsters won in 2005, and Andy Roddick and Ana Ivanović won in 2006. Defending US Open champions Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova won in 2007.
In 2005, although Roddick was upset in the first round against Gilles Müller at the Open, Clijsters became the first person to win $2.2 million (the largest payday ever in women's sports) by beating Frenchwoman Mary Pierce in straight sets: 6-3, 6-1.
In 2007, Federer won the US Open series and went on to win the US Open, winning $1.4 million plus the US Open Series bonus of $1 million, bringing his prize winning total to $2.4 million. This tops Clijsters $2.2 million as the biggest US Open payday ever.
