Free professional sports! During the daytime even, giving you a probably good enough reason to skip work and go to Queens. The qualifying tournament for the 2012 US Open kicks off today, and you can go see the qualifying rounds for free through Friday. The matches start at 11am and 1pm, and there are dozens of matches scheduled. Tickets for the rest of the tournament range from $90 to $1,013 for court-side seating, so, yeah, qualifying matches sound pretty great.
If we knew more about the sport than what we learned from Mario Tennis, this is where we’d put in some pithy comment about what to expect. But all we know is that Rafael Nadal won’t be there due to injuries, and a few other big names have pulled out too, but Federer and Andy Murray will be on the court, as will Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, so it should be more than exciting enough.
Also, King Koopa will probably dominate again, because that spinning power shell move is a bitch.
The US Open is held Flushing Meadows Corona Park off the Mets-Willets Point 7 train, right across from CitiField.