For a July midday session at Louis Armstrong Stadium, the sun sits 67° up in the south-east as play begins, so shade means the covered stands, a closed retractable roof, or waiting for the sun to drop behind the far stand. Sunset is 8:25 PM local, so an evening session gets real shade as the sun drops. By 7:05 PM the sun is only 13° up in the west, 80 minutes from setting.
Check the sun for YOUR match →We know this court's orientation and roof, but not a verified seat-by-seat map, so we won't colour individual sections. What's above is exact: the sun's astronomical position for the court's coordinates and timezone. The interactive page adds the live sun compass, sunset against session time, and the hour-by-hour forecast.
Sun & sunset check for Louis Armstrong Stadium · Satellite shadow view
Louis Armstrong Stadium solved a problem most tennis venues ignore. When the US Open rebuilt its number-two court in 2018, it gave the 14,053-seat stadium a naturally ventilated retractable roof with deep overhangs, a design that lets breezes flow through the bowl while the structure above blocks a surprising amount of sun. The result is the rare stadium where the roof helps you even on the days it never closes, which is most of them, since here as elsewhere at the Open the roof shuts for rain rather than heat.
The back rows of the upper bowl sit in shade for most of the afternoon even with the roof fully open, because those deep overhangs hang out over the seating like a permanent awning. That makes the top of Louis Armstrong Stadium the most reliable shade purchase on the US Open grounds short of a suite. The trade-off is distance from the court, but for a long day session in late-summer Flushing heat, distance is a fair price for not baking.
Lower in the bowl, geometry takes over. The court runs on the same near north-south axis as Arthur Ashe next door, the long axis bears about 336 degrees, so the sidelines split the afternoon the usual way. As the sun swings west, the west sideline and the south baseline fall into shade first, while the east sideline faces the sinking sun and stays bright until late in the afternoon.
No amount of clever architecture beats a high summer sun. At a noon start the sun stands 67 degrees above the horizon in the southeast, and at that angle it pours into the whole bowl; even the shade-friendly sections take direct sun through the early afternoon. If you are attending a midday match at Louis Armstrong Stadium, plan for a stretch of full exposure no matter where you sit:
The US Open falls in late August and early September, when New York can still be hot and sticky. Hydrate ahead of the heat rather than behind it, day sessions run for hours, and the walk around the grounds between matches adds more sun time in Flushing than most visitors expect to log in a whole day.
Evening sessions at Louis Armstrong Stadium involve zero sun. By 7 PM in high summer the sun has dropped to about 13 degrees in the west-northwest, well below the rim of the bowl, and sunset follows around 8:25 PM in July, earlier by tournament time. If your schedule is flexible and shade is the goal, the evening ticket settles the question entirely, and the ventilated design keeps the air moving through the bowl even on a still, muggy night. For a day session, the difference between a pleasant afternoon and a punishing one comes down to which side and how high, so run your exact date through the interactive shade map before choosing a section.
Upcoming events at Louis Armstrong Stadium are ticketed on TixBit.