There are plenty of big sporting events I’ve never been to. I’ve never been to the Masters. Never been to the Super Bowl. Never been to the World Jai Alai championships (if there is such a thing). But I have to say, the layout here at the Open is as impressive as I’ve seen anywhere.

The U.S. Tennis Center is like its own city. The place is an enclave, completely cut off from the rest of Flushing by a ring of orange cones that line every road around Corona Park. Security is intense. There are security people posted at every entrance to every gate and every door that scan the barcode on your media pass. As if someone could forge a media pass with a fake barcode that can only be caught by scan.

The media center has everything you could want. It’s a huge room lined wall to wall with individual workstations—maybe 350 in total. Each station has a TV where you can watch every court and every interview room. They bring you every stat and piece of info you could ever want. The interview room is 10 feet down the hall. You can basically be a quadripalegic and cover this event with 95% effectiveness. Not being a quadripalegic I hope to put in the full 100%.

For all the bustle of the day, though, the silence at night is deafening. I was here for James Blake’s five-set match against Donald Young on Monday night and didn’t end up leaving until almost 2 a.m. The parking is pretty far away—that’s the only bad part of the whole setup—so I was walking through the park looking for my car and got lost because everything was dark and no one was left to follow. Ended up wandering in circles around a dark NYC park for 20 minutes, praying I’d find my car before I got mugged. Keep in mind I had my laptop on me the whole time. I think I might have seen Novak Djokovic lurking behind a tree.