District of Columbia

Terrible event; rude staff, bad food and ugly seetring. it ain't Monte Carlo, That's for sure.

I have been going to Citi Open for the last 20 years. I have been a great fan and mostly due to excellent free transportation/ shuttle they provided and reasonable ticket prices. But this year was a disaster!

First, there were multiple sites about the transportation with conflicting information. Second, we had tickets for 10 am session but no shuttle was provided before 1 pm! Third, the Gico parking was no longer available and we needed to park near designated parking area for $14. Fourth, we were instructed to take S1, S4 bus to get close to tennis center. But the bus did not exist at designated parking recommended by the event. We had to ask a bus driver who advised us to instead take E bus to get to our destination. Overall, this is complete non sense to make transportation so difficult, expensive and multi step process. The other alternative was to take an Uber! We were willing to park at Citi center and pay $40 but that was full also.

Then there is small pizza one topping (only cheese) for $20! Why are they nickel and dime people and even not allowing people to take sufficient water so that they can charge $4-5 for a bottle of water.

The ticket prices for qualifying sessions were more expensive than the final! Why? It used to be $15 and then changed to $25 last year. But it was about $130 this year for the cheapest. I decided to skip the whole thing until on the last days they opened something call grounds only because probably they found not many people can afford/willing to pay these outrageous prices. Very disappointing and will not attend the event in the future until they address the issues.

Single event tickets did not go on sale until a couple of weeks out. I purchased 2 for $150 each and just left the event without even going in. If you don’t have a parking pass do yourself a favor and Uber. There is no onsite parking. You must park on Wisconsin Avenue 2.5 miles away and wait in a line for over an hour to board a shuttle to take you to the tennis center and then wait in line again for an hour to enter into the match. This is no longer the real Citi Open or Legg Mason, I won’t go again.

The shuttle bus service does not start until 1PM while the matches start at 12PM. The tournament announced the August 5th schedule AFTER they say they have sold out the tickets. Only WTA SFs are scheduled in the afternoon session, and both of ATP SFs are in the evening. More over, the official website does not update in timely manner. Whole things are big mess.

Session 1 is a total after thought except the prices. The shuttle situation was stupid from lack of clarity to a web page not found to no management loading at end of day. People were literally pushing to get into a shuttle.

Over 100 degrees and vendors selling water from a dollar to 10.00. Volunteers cannot run an event. Take responsibility.