Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz had a promising start to the U.S. Open mixed doubles tournament when they won their first-round match, but the pair of former World No. 1s were then eliminated in straight sets in the quarterfinals.
Williams and Alcaraz defeated New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe and Great Britain’s Lloyd Glasspool 5-3, 4-1 in the opening round before the fourth-seeded tandem of Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic and Italy’s Flavio Cobolli prevailed 5-4 (4), 4-1 in the quarters on Tuesday in New York.
Even one victory was enough to leave fans of both Williams and Alcaraz encouraged. Williams, 44, played her first match in Arthur Ashe Stadium since her 2022 retirement.
“It’s always such an amazing place to be here,” Williams said in her on-court interview after the duo defeated Routliffe and Glasspool in 58 minutes. “I never expected to be back on this court, so it was just a really cool moment.
“This is such a bonus for us to be out here and to play with Carlos is honestly so cool.”
Williams will not compete in singles or women’s doubles in Flushing Meadows this year, but the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion may be working toward a greater comeback after she played Wimbledon last July as a wild card and lost in the first round.
Alcaraz, for his part, played his first competitive tennis of any kind since injuring his right wrist in April — forcing him to miss the French Open, Wimbledon and more.
“Everyone could see how nervous I was,” Alcaraz added. “I made a double fault on the first point. I was really, really nervous…. I was out for almost five months. I almost forgot how it felt to step on court once again. (The nervousness) was just for a couple of games, then Serena made it easy for me.”
Then Bencic and Cobolli had their say, beating them in 55 minutes later in the day.
The 16-team competition features a $1 million prize to the winning duo. It has attracted a combination of singles stars and doubles specialists, which generally has favored the specialists.
Case in point: The star power of Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic was not enough Tuesday as Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten knocked out the top-seeded duo in the first round.
Patten and Siniakova won the last three games of the second set and the final eight points of the match tiebreaker in a 48-minute victory, 1-4, 4-2, 10-2. Siniakova delivered an ace serving to Djokovic on match point.
“You could see in the first set it was just big serves and bigger shots,” Siniakova said in her on-court interview. “But I think we want to do it for doubles. It was a great turnaround. I enjoyed it.”
Siniakova, from the Czech Republic, is ranked No. 1 in women’s doubles and No. 39 in women’s singles. Patten, of Great Britain, is ranked No. 1 in men’s doubles.
Their opponents were seeded first, however, and originally scheduled to face Frances Tiafoe and Leylah Fernandez before Tiafoe pulled out of mixed doubles due to a lingering wrist injury following his run to the ATP 1000 final in Cincinnati last weekend.
Sabalenka, from Belarus, is the No. 1 women’s singles player and two-time defending U.S. Open champion. Serbian legend Djokovic is No. 5 in men’s singles and a 24-time Grand Slam champion. That’s the kind of tandem the tournament was seeking to bring in bigger names and promote interest in mixed doubles, which this year changed formats to a two-day event before the singles main draw starts.
Tuesday’s matches were a best-of-three format with the first two sets being the first to four games, with a 10-point match tiebreak instead of a third set. The semifinals and final will be played Wednesday night, with only the final featuring the traditional first-to-six-games sets.
Patten and Siniakova, who advanced to the first round through qualifying, lost in their quarterfinal match to the married pair of Elina Svitolina of Ukraine and Gael Monfils of France, who won 5-4 (6), 4-5 (3), 1-0 (8).
Svitolina and Monfils will face Bencic and Cobolli in one semifinal. The other will see the Czech tandem of Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik square off against Russians Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev.
–Field Level Media
