Whether it was Emma Raducanu’s open-mouthed, head-in-hands reaction to a Carlos Alcaraz forehand winner around the net, or Novak Djokovic’s jig following a forehand passing shot of his own, there were numerous moments that had the U.S. Open mixed doubles crowd on their feet on Tuesday in New York.
The fairness and sporting merit of the event have come into question since its inception, but the first day of play was defined by something more fundamental to tennis as a sport: the inarguable potency of seeing elite female and male athletes competing against one another on the same court.
Whether it was Iga Świątek getting the better of Grand Slam semifinalists Frances Tiafoe and Lorenzo Musetti from the baseline (as she has done previously with players such as Taylor Fritz and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina), or Jack Draper showing no mercy against Raducanu and then Mirra Andreeva, these are easily digestible storylines with wide appeal.
Men versus women is, for better or worse, an endless fascination, and no sport does it like tennis. But no sport has fumbled a USP of its magnitude for so long, given that mixed doubles — previously a high-profile discipline at the Grand Slams — has become marginalized to the point of irrelevance.
As singles has become more taxing, the appetite to play doubles on the side has dwindled.
There have been brief moments.
In 2019, Serena Williams and Roger Federer faced off against each other in the Hopman Cup and then took what was dubbed “the greatest selfie of all time”. Later that year, Williams and Andy Murray joined forces at Wimbledon and became the feel-good story of the tournament.
Those of us privileged to be on Centre Court for their second-round win against Fabrice Martin and Raquel Atawo will never forget the gasps and then the explosion of noise when Williams returned a 138mph Martin serve for a clean winner.
A woman destroying a serve that was 7mph quicker than the women’s record was utterly compelling. Williams was so far and away the best player on the court that night that Murray, a two-time Wimbledon men’s singles winner, spent much of it just watching and admiring as she routinely dismantled Martin’s serve and most powerful strokes.
A couple of years earlier, John McEnroe had said of Williams that “if she played the men’s circuit she’d be, like, (ranked) 700 in the world,” Williams’ masterclass felt like a particularly powerful rejoinder — channeling the spirit of Billie Jean King winning the “Battle of the Sexes” against former world No. 1 Bobby Riggs in 1973. In a sport where so much inequality remains, stories like these will always have additional resonance.
At last year’s Paris Olympics, Daniil Medvedev, at the time the men’s world No. 5, struggled to deal with Sara Errani’s snail-paced serve, which became an internet meme. On Tuesday, current world No. 4 and last year’s U.S. Open finalist Fritz at times had similar difficulties.
Another great appeal is the way the unisex format allows players to show more of their personalities. Putting players on court in an unfamiliar format, with unfamiliar opponents, has a way of showing different sides of them as people. On Tuesday, Djokovic performed a dance that ended with him grabbing his foot after spearing a forehand up the line past Medvedev, while Draper was forced to defend himself after accusations he was taking the event too seriously.
“I’m hearing that a lot — it’s a bit of an exhibition, a bit of fun, (so) why am I so locked in?” he said in a news conference after he and Jessica Pegula had beaten Medvedev and Andreeva to reach tonight’s semifinals. “I’m enjoying being locked in. I don’t know why it’s a crime to be locked in.”
The United States Tennis Association (USTA) had, in part, revamped the mixed doubles to tap into these dynamics with added star power. The “Mixed Madness” exhibition ahead of last year’s U.S. Open was a big hit — it was 2022 Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini who got schooled by Świątek on that occasion, so much so that her partner Sebastian Korda jokingly left the court for a moment.
“It truly is something unique in sport where you have the best athletes, male and female, competing on the same field of play at the same time against one another,” Lew Sherr, the then-USTA chief executive, said in a video interview. “It doesn’t exist in other professional sports, and we think it’s something that is truly unique to tennis, to Grand Slam tennis, and represents an amazing opportunity to bring the sport or encourage more fans to follow the sport.”
This version of that opportunity has its flaws. It locks out another enticing dynamic — singles star vs doubles specialist — with the exception of Errani’s partnership with Andrea Vavassori, and the vibe of the new event remains closer to exhibition than Grand Slam.
But it has at least re-raised the question of how tennis can better take advantage of one of its most powerful USPs.
Who isn’t looking forward to seeing Draper and Świątek unapologetically trying to smash each other off the court in a few hours’ time?
(Photo: Frey / TPN via Getty Images)