Arthur Ashe, 1975

Today’s SAT question of the day is an improving sentences question about a stadium in New York that is named for Arthur Ashe.  We have several pieces of information in this sentence that need to be organized properly:

• The main stadium of the US Open is in NY
• Arthur Ashe won the first ever US Open men’s singles title in 1968
• The main US Open stadium is named after Arthur Ashe

The last part of the sentence (non-underlined) is about Arthur Ashe winning the 1968 title, so the information just before that must be about Arthur Ashe, not NY.

The first part of the sentence (non-underlined), then, must include the stadium’s location in NY.

So, we need an answer choice that says that the stadium, located in NY, is named after Arthur Ashe, winner of the 1968 title.  The subject of our sentence (the stadium) also needs a verb in the present indicative tense so that we don’t construct a run-on.

Choice B starts off well but doesn’t have a verb that would go with the stadium at all.

Choice E starts off medium-well but its verb is not in the right tense – in fact, that “being” isn’t really acting as a verb at all in this answer choice.  (Do you know what part of speech this present participle is pretending to be?)

Choice D is perfect.  It starts with the location, it has an “is” that matches our stadium (the stadium is named after Arthur Ashe), and it ends with Mr. Ashe to tie in the final piece of information.

Once again, making sure our verbs and pronouns line up proves to be the key to the SAT writing section!