Thirty minutes before the gates to Arthur Ashe Stadium opened at 4 p.m. on June 22, a cluster of people began gently rolling tennis balls across a parking lot.
One after the other, they lowered one knee close to the ground, extended their opposite arm, and released a tennis ball to someone 10 feet away.
Closer to a locked chain-link fence, a gaggle of people started doing calisthenics as others nervously shifted their weight back and forth, tightly clutching their paper applications.
The group of 500 people — already whittled down from some 1,200 online applicants — would be vying for 120 spots as ball people for the U.