The final grand slam of the year, the US Open begins this week in New York City, but the first champions have already been crowned! Italian mixed doubles pair, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori defended their mixed doubles crown in the revamped US Open Mixed Doubles – ‘An official grand slam event’ as the tournament insisted before it began, despite there being very few actual doubles players in sight. However, even with the controversy, I have to say I really did enjoy it very much indeed, but a large part of that was because of the winners. I’ve never considered myself a Sara Errani fan, but as a big fan of doubles – pretty exclusively women’s doubles – I was sad so few of them got the chance to compete. But I was very surprised how much I was rooting for Errani and Vavassori! I like Iga and Casper, but if the singles players had beaten the doubles players, I think we would never hear the end of it! I also doubt they would get a look in at this event in the future. As Iga Swiatek said in her speech, ‘you proved mixed doubles players are smarter tactically than singles players.’

This event was an innovation that was brought in to liven up fan week and to get big name singles players involved. The initial line up included almost every top 10 singles player – men and women – apart from Coco Gauff, ironically the biggest US star and one who has actually played a fair bit of doubles. Injury took out a bunch but there were still a lot of intriguing pairs. Media darlings Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz were probably the highest profile team, but their lack of actual doubles skills led to a first round exit. Madison Keys and Frances Tiafoe sounded great for US fans but were one of the teams that seemed fairly uninterested. Gael Monfils played with Naomi Osaka after Nick Kyrgios (thankfully) withdrew. 45 year old legend Venus Wiliams teamed up with doubles hater Reilly Opelka. Novak Djokovic turned up to collect his cheque with an Olga Danilovic who resembled a frighted rabbit at times in their loss to Daniil Medvedev and Mirra Andreeva. Those two were getting the band back together after a memorable attempt at the mixed doubles at the Paris Olympics last year. Mirra has played a lot of doubles since then, and it really was noticeable which players had a bit of a clue how to play at the net! Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud, who had a sweet social media exchange after Ruud send Iga words of encouragement earlier in the year when she was struggling, made a really good team. With Iga riding high on confidence right now, they really pushed the eventual champions. 

A couple of the pairs had played together before. Taylor Townsend, who just overtook her doubles partner Katerina Siniakova for the doubles number 1 slot, reached the semifinal of the mixed doubles at the US Open with Ben Shelton in 2023 and were many people’s tip but they were inexplicably beaten by alternate pair, Christian Harrison and Danielle Collins. For me, a real sadness was that Katerina Siniakova, who had been due to play with men’s singles number 1, Jannik Sinner missed out on competing. Siniakova is one of the best doubles players of her generation, and recently added a mixed doubles slam title when she paired with Sem Verbeek to win at Wimbledon. Her team up with Sinner would have been great to see. Sadly, Sinner got ill and had to retire from the men’s singles final in Cincinnati on Monday when 0-5 down to Carlos Alcaraz. His withdrawal meant Siniakova was out too as she couldn’t get a new partner after the draw had been made – although if it had been the other way around I strongly suspect the US Open would have found a new partner for Sinner!  

The fact is they didn’t really want doubles players in this tournament. This was about the stars people knew – singles players – and the prospect of being about to call themselves a grand slam champion – and this is the only issue I had with this fun event. If a singles player had been about to call themself a grand slam champion after this 2 day, glorified exhibition, that would have been egregious! Errani and Vavassori said it several times – their victory was a win for all of the doubles players. And it was obvious they were determined to win it from the first point! 

The tournament had ‘kindly’ drawn them against another fancied pair, Taylor Fritz and Elena Rybakina who had won the Indian Wells tie break tens exhibition together. Fritz has actually played quite a bit of mixed doubles alongside Coco Gauff at the United Cup. However, Errai serving to male players is always entertaining, and Fritz managed to miss quite a few returns, as plenty of other had before and did after. Errani’s much mocked serve which barely gets to 70mph was not broken at all on the first day. Indeed in the match with Fritz and Rybakina she dropped just 2 points on serve – and one of those was a double fault!  

Probably the most entertaining match of day 1 was Errani and Vavassori against Rublev and Muchova. Rublev is actually a mixed doubles Olympic gold medallist after Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova dragged him to the gold at the Tokyo 2020 games. Muchova has the hand skills that meant this was a really nice match. Rublev was smiling, Muchova was pumped – but ultimately the doubles pair would not be denied! 

On the other side of the draw, the surprise team of Jack Draper and Jess Pegula were the stars of day 1 – closely followed by Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud. These two teams were what this tournament was all about in my opinion. Singles players who took this event seriously and played to win. Draper was outstanding on day 1, but looked a bit less comfortable in the loss in the semifinals to Swiatek and Ruud, despite leading 8-4 in the match tie break. Once again, Pegula’s extensive doubles experience showed. She just looked like she knew what to do on the court, while Draper at the net was not a pretty sight! However, Jess and Jack made a few errors and the match was gone. 

It all led to a terrific final where the established doubles team of Errani and Vavassori started well, indeed they led a set and 5-3, and Vavassori served for the match at 5-4, but Ruud and Swiatek wanted this too and pushed it to a final set match tie break which the Italians won, with Errani doing her signature underarm serve on match point to Casper Ruud. They lost that point but converted the next one, to scenes of jubilation! 

Was the USTA mad at the Italians for spoiling their party? I hope not. They had huge crowds, the whole of the tennis world was talking about mixed doubles, the players seemed to enjoy themselves. However the slew of doubles players congratulating Errai and Vavassori was notable.

One of the criticisms of the event was its timing – Iga Swiatek and Carlos Alcaraz won their finals in Cincinnati on Monday evening, jumped on a plane to NYC and didn’t land til well after midnight. Iga was back on court at midday on Tuesday! This event was planned to take place on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the start of the US Open. The tours have stretched the 1000 level tournaments so much that many are 10-13 days long and just drag, but also butt up against the following tournament, as it was in this case. Yes, mixed doubles is less tiring on the body but by the time we got to the final, those pairs were on their fourth match in 2 days.  

One thing I had expected to dislike was the scoring. The so called fast 4 means that the first to 4 wins, and in mixed doubles that was usually one break of serve. It also meant that Errani usually only had to serve once in a set as most matches had the men holding serve more than the women. The fact that this changed to normal, first to 6 scoring for the final gave it a different feel. I actually found the fast 4 format perfectly ok. It did mean most matches were done in 40-50 minutes but that was fine! Switching it up in the final gave Swiatek and Ruud a chance to get back into the match. 

A word on Errani and Vavassori, the now two-time champions here as well as the 2025 Roland Garros champions. I was super impressed with how well Andrea Vavassori moved at the net. He’s 6’4″ but moves so well. When he seemed to get a bit of a thigh strain in set 2, that is when things looked a bit dicey for a few minutes. One reason Sara Errani’s serve was less under threat was how well he closes down the net. If Vavassori’s movement was compromised, they might have lost. Casper Ruud made this point when asked about why so many guys struggle to return Sara Erranis’s serve:

Errani herself has amazing hands and defends heavy shots from the guys really well, plus she has the guts to thrown in an underarm serve on match point! In women’s doubles, Errani is superb at putting away overheads, but in the mixed she also is smart about knowing when to leave it to her much taller and stronger partner!

This event was really enjoyable and definitely worked, but I hope they do make a few tweaks. You can’t deny that people do want to see the top singles stars, but they also love great tennis and Errani and Vavassori were popular in all of their matches. There is something special about a sport where men and women compete against each other and tennis is in a unique position – yet has not made the most of that. This type of event can hopefully let more people see that there is great tennis to enjoy beyond the singles court! Mixed doubles – and actually even more so fast 4 mixed doubles – has intrigue in almost every game! It is also a form of the game that is probably played most by tennis playing civilians! There is something fascinating about watching the women handle the speed of the men’s serves and a joy if a woman aces a male player!

For me, there were some teams that we really didn’t need – Zverev/Bencic, Anisimova/Rune, Keys/Tiafoe and obviously Collins/Harrison were a last minute entry. If you had Sinner and Siniakova or if Katka had been able to enter with Sem Verbeek. Felix Auger-Aliassime and Gaby Dabrowski won Olympic bronze together and were on the entry list at one point as were a few other teams that could have been fun. 

I understand that they want to draw in the singles players and therefore the crowds but hopefully a few more doubles players will get to enter – as Su-Wei Hsieh said..

I like the idea that the winners of the mixed doubles at the other slams get wild cards into this event. Only the US Open can afford the $1million prize money and probably hefty appearance fees for the top players. The other slams are probably watching the success of this, but either couldn’t afford it or have events the week before a slam that they run so couldn’t compromise those with this glorified exhibition. Jack Draper and Karolina Muchova both called it that – two players who are not exactly reationaries!

So overall, it was brilliant to see so many people packing out the stadium for doubles, great to see top singles players playing doubles. Now if we can just let a few of the doubles players get a look in too…