US Open Series

The US Open Series is the seven-week summer tennis season linking twelve ATP World Tour and 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. From 2012 until 2018, the series will be sponsored by Emirates.

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 World Tour Masters 1000 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.

Players earn points for the US Open Series Bonus Challenge, according to their results in the events; more points are awarded at ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and WTA Premier 5 events. The three male and three female players with the most points in the US Open Series Bonus Challenge earn a money purse. The amount depends on their US Open Series placement and US Open result. If both are won then the bonus is $1 million as of 2010.

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 Ivanovic won in 2006. Defending US Open champions Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova won in 2007.

...
Wikipedia