To many who came to the US Open grounds this week, the showpiece of the mixed doubles championship came Tuesday afternoon, with the returns of Serena Williams (after four years away from tennis) and Carlos Alcaraz (after four months out with a wrist injury). To the players who remained in the field after Williams and Alcaraz exited in the quarter-finals, the real highlight was Wednesday night’s final at Arthur Ashe Stadium, with its $1m in prize money on the line. Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík made the most of the spotlight, beating Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6 (10-6) for the title.
Their win capped an event that, in a reversal of recent years, was dominated by singles players instead of doubles specialists. The Czech duo beat Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev earlier in the night and the runners-up bested Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils in a pair of competitive semi-finals that each lasted over an hour, making for a final that finished just before midnight. Since its format was reimagined last year in an effort to entice the top singles players to participate, the mixed doubles competition has drawn criticism.
The revamp moved the tournament a week before the start of singles play and raised the winners’ prize from $200,000 to $1m, but cut the field to 16 and drew outcry from doubles specialists kept out of the draw. The 2025 champions, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, were specialists, but some questioned whether the new event - with its four-game sets until the final, no ad-scoring and a 10-point tiebreak - should even be categorized as a grand slam title. Tournament organizers responded this year, adjusting the format to include an eight-team qualifying draw that allowed more specialists to enter.
They gathered a captivating field, headlined by Williams playing in New York for the first time since the 2022 match that was her presumptive farewell. Even so, by Tuesday’s end, the tournament had lost not just its highest-profile names - Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka and Felix Auger-Aliassime and Alex Eala made quick first-round exits - but also its doubles specialist teams, all four of whom were out by the quarter-finals. What the semi-finalist pairs lacked in spectacle or doubles pedigree, they made up for in another category: bringing the fun that this format encouraged.
Asked how they’d spend the time before the final, Bencic answered “beer”, earning a laugh and slight panic from Cobolli. Muchová and Menšík played their matches in color-coordinated pink-and-maroon looks; when Muchová brought up her vision, Menšík had to ask what maroon was. Andreeva joked she used to have a crush on the nine-years-older Rublev. (Why him?
You feel, like, sorry,” Rublev said.) As for Monfils and Svitolina, few pairs in the sport know each other better: they began dating in 2018, married in 2021 and have a three-year-old daughter. Yet they had never played doubles together before this week. While Svitolina is the world No 9, the 307th-ranked Monfils is set to retire after this season and received a singles wild card.
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