Wimbledon and the US Open—where tennis sets the stage, and everything else is the point. Every summer, two tournaments quietly take over the cultural calendar: the Wimbledon Championships in London, held each year from late June into early July, and the US Open in New York, which arrives at the end of August and carries into early September. On paper, they are simply two of the four Grand Slams. In reality, they operate as two very different social systems—each revealing as