When a good friend reached out to ask if I’d like to attend the U.S. Open with her (in courtside seats sponsored by her investment firm employer, no less) I jumped at the opportunity. The Grand Slam tournament — set amid the summer’s final feverish days — had long been on my bucket list as a New Yorker.

As a lifelong runner and intermittent tennis player, one might assume my response to my friend would be related to the world-class athletes we’d get to see play. Instead, I smirked in amusement when, after replying with an enthusiastic “YESSSS” to my friend’s text, we each sent variations of the same messages simultaneously, neither of which were about tennis.

“We need to plan our fits.”

“We can dress so cute.”

“And get the honey deuce.”

Call it womanhood, call it brat summer, but I have a hunch that our instinctive, knee-jerk responses to the news that we’d be attending the U.S. Open together speak to a larger cultural phenomenon. That is, at least for some of the tens of thousands of Open-goers who have flocked to Flushing Meadows Corona Park since the event kicked off late last month.

“It’s like Black Friday at Walmart,” Long Islander Sally Neal told the New York Times of the crowds this year, the most in the tournament’s 142-year history.

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So why are so many people attending the U.S. Open? It depends on who you ask.

"If you wanna go to the atmosphere, you go to the f**king club, right?"

When it comes to tennis, there’s no denying the U.S. Open’s historical relevance and influence. While not as old or perhaps as prestigious as Wimbledon, which is held annually in London, the U.S. Open is an athletic juggernaut in its own right. Household names like the legendary Serena Williams and John McEnroe are among those who have earned the title of most championships won at the tournament. At last year’s U.S. Open, fledgling phenom Coco Guaff’s singles victory marked the most-viewed major tennis final ever on ESPN.

Vinkan Cinaroglu, a 30-something from San Antonio, Texas, told Salon he’d flown to New York to celebrate his birthday and attend the U.S. Open with family. Cinaroglu, an ardent tennis fan, felt confident that more people were present at the event for the game itself than for the social atmosphere. “If you wanna go to........

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