NEW YORK -- It might not have escaped people's notice that Iga Swiatek was the first match on court at the US Open on Thursday, the Pole easing into the third round with a 6-3, 6-2 win over Nadia Podoroska of Argentina.
Swiatek likes to play the opening match if she can. In a packed schedule with singles and doubles matches jostling for position, having a definite start time is something she enjoys, while getting the job done early and getting away from the grounds by early to midafternoon is an added bonus.
Player requests are just one thing that a tournament has to take into account when deciding the next day's schedule. Fairness -- ensuring players in the same section play at roughly the same time -- is the first criteria, closely followed by television demands.
US Open tournament director Eric Butorac told ESPN that sorting out the schedule is his favorite part of the job.
"I see it as being like a jigsaw puzzle," he said. "There's just so much that goes into it. On the doubles court, strategy was kind of my favorite part of the game, and I think there's a lot of strategy and a lot of communication. Those are two things that I really enjoy about the role, and you get to kind of maximize them in this space."
Television competes with the demand from players. "Broadcast requests are really important," Butorac said. "ESPN domestic obviously has a ton of weight, and how this event is portrayed around the country and the globe is super important. As you can imagine, Brits [Sky Sports] are often looking for them to play earlier in the day and they never want [their] players overlapping. Asian [players] and Australians are often late."
Though everyone knows players can request to play at a certain time or on a certain court, some are coy about the act. At this year's French Open, Swiatek looked startled when ESPN asked if she had been requesting to play the first match. Eventually, after looking to the WTA moderator for guidance, she said, "Yeah, I requested."
As a top doubles player -- Butorac reached the Australian Open final in 2014 and was once ranked inside the top 20 -- he worked as a senior director of player relations at the US Open before taking over as tournament director in 2025.
Fielding requests from all manner of angles requires diplomacy, especially when big names are involved, as was the case for Friday's schedule, with Serena Williams and Venus Williams beginning their doubles campaign together.
"We're going to put Serena and Venus in there," he said, "So then we have [Aryna] Sabalenka and we have Jess Pegula versus Leylah Fernandez. So we're like, OK, because of Leylah, that match feels like the better match. So then Sabalenka has to go out. We communicate with the team, say you're going to go to Armstrong and there's an option to play first. OK. If you tell me you want somewhere else, I'll listen to it. And they listened to it, came back and said, first sounds good."
Frances Tiafoe told reporters he loves playing on Armstrong, but Butorac said he is usually happy to play on any of the show courts. Players are not always happy with the scheduling, of course, and sometimes Butorac takes the brunt of the complaints.
"I've had top players be really upset, really foul language upset," he said. "But I guess my take on that is, I try to be honest with them, and sometimes that can be difficult to hear. I prefer that to telling them some sort of story that isn't true that might be easier on their feelings.
"They'll be mad in the moment, a certain player was chosen over them, star power, but at least they know that I've given them the straight reason, and that next time when this happens again, they know that there's not some story that they might find out from somewhere else."
Butorac said that if a player always puts in a request, they might not get their wish every time, whereas if someone rarely requests, but then makes a good case, he might consider it a little more.
Schedulers also have to balance the consideration of the on-site fans, offering them good matches on outside courts as well as inside the two main ones, Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong.
And then there are the night sessions. Though some players love playing at night -- think Alexander Zverev -- there's always an attempt to prevent matches starting extra late or finishing well into the early hours of the morning.
Both Arthur Ashe and Armstrong currently begin at 7 p.m., with two matches on each court. Play didn't finish before midnight on the first three nights, and there have been calls for the evening sessions to start earlier.
Butorac said the journey from Manhattan to Queens in rush hour makes an earlier start difficult, but he did say it was feasible they could stagger matches, starting earlier on Armstrong to at least ensure both courts didn't finish extra late.
"In New York, it would be a challenge to start before 7 p.m. Could we do 6," he said. "It's something we're going to address every year. Obviously we've had a couple of late ones to start with. It's just hard when we really want to hit equality. One men's match, one women's match. We feel like 7p.m. is the right time."
