Flushing Meadows in New York is the place to be for tennis fans now that the 2017 U.S. Open is underway.

Monday's schedule is jam-packed with major matches, especially on the women's side, where Venus Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Maria Sharapova, Simona Halep and Garbine Muguruza will all begin their respective quests for the year's final Grand Slam title.

In the men's bracket, folks will have to wait until Tuesday to catch a glimpse of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Until then, the 2017 tournament debuts of 20-year-old Alexander Zverev and 2014 champion Marin Cilic should keep folks plenty occupied, whether they're watching at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center or from home.

The entire event will be carried live on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3, along with WatchESPN for those who would prefer to live-stream the matches. If you miss any of the action, tune into The Tennis Channel, which will carry replay TV coverage each day. 

The first day of seeded play begins bright and early and with a bang. There are 16 matches slated to start at 8:00 a.m. ET in New York City. For the full schedule, head to the U.S. Open's official website.

The most intriguing match of the day may well be one of the last. At 4:00 p.m. ET, Halep, the No. 2 ranked player in the WTA, will take on Sharapova at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Halep has played into the quarterfinals and beyond in 11 of the 14 events she's played this year, including an appearance in the French Open final and a title run at the Madrid Masters.

She'll have her hands full in the opening round with Sharapova. The 2006 U.S. Open champion has played just one match since May on account of soreness in her left arm. She does, however, have a history of handling Halep. Sharapova has defeated the 25-year-old Romanian six times in as many tries, highlighted by a victory in the 2014 French Open final.

Halep wasn't taken aback when she found out she'd be facing Sharapova in her opening match—not entirely, anyway.

"My reaction was normal, because this year I had very tough draws every time almost," Halep told WTA insider Courtney Nguyen. "Of course was a little bit, like, 'How is it possible again?'"

If Halep scores her first win over Sharapova, she will have a shot to snag the tour's No. 1 ranking with another deep run.

On the men's side, Andy Murray was originally scheduled to play Tennys Sandgren in the Round of 128. But Murray's recurring hip injury forced him to withdraw from this year's U.S. Open before it began.

As BBC 5 live's David Law noted, the U.S. Open has not been kind to Murray since his 2012 championship:

Instead, Sandgren will see Cilic, ranked No. 7 on the ATP World Tour, at 9:15 a.m. ET at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Cilic is coming off a three-set loss to Federer in the 2017 Wimbledon final. The 28-year-old Croatian has never played Sandgren head-to-head in a professional match.

Eight hours later, on the very same court, all eyes will turn to Zverev, the fourth-ranked men's tennis player in the world, in his matchup with Darian King. The 20-year-old German has racked up five singles and one doubles title this year, but he has yet to crack the quarterfinals at any Grand Slam event in his young career.

"Obviously I'm super happy the way things are going, but I'm not going to be satisfied with just being the No. 4 seed," Zverev told ATPWorldTour.com. "Doesn't really matter at the end of the tournament what seed you were. It only matters how far you went and what matches you have won."

In Flushing, he'll look to become the second-youngest champion in the Open era, behind 19-year-old Pete Sampras in 1990.