Serena Williams will team up with Carlos Alcaraz to create a powerhouse mixed doubles pair on her return to the US Open. The US Tennis Association announced on Saturday that Williams and Alcaraz had been given a wild card into the tournament. The mixed doubles main draw begins on Tuesday, with the winning team sharing $1 million.
It will be Williams’s first time playing at the US Open since 2022. The 23-time Grand Slam singles champion returned to tennis this summer. Williams is not planning to play singles in New York.
The USTA had been holding one women’s wild card, presumably in case Williams wanted it. However, the tournament announced on Saturday that it had been given to American Sofia Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion. Williams played singles at Wimbledon but sustained a knee injury in her first-round loss.
She played doubles with older sister Venus at the Cincinnati Open, and they could still opt to play together at the US Open. Alcaraz announced this week he would return to defend his US Open singles title after being sidelined since April with a right wrist injury. Serena Williams won a mixed doubles title at the US Open even before winning any of her six singles titles there.
She teamed for the 1998 championship with Max Mirnyi, who now works with top-ranked woman Aryna Sabalenka. The mixed doubles tournament is far different now, as the USTA revamped it last year to make it a two-day, 16-team event it hoped would draw top singles players. Few are bigger than Williams and Alcaraz, the two-time US Open men’s champion who is ranked number two.
The USTA also announced a number of updates to the field after some players withdrew from the competition. Americans Jessica Pegula and Taylor Fritz will team up, after their previous partners, Jack Draper and Elena Rybakina, pulled out with injuries. The teams of Emma Navarro and Tommy Paul, along with Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik, were given the remaining two wild cards into the main draw.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
