NEW YORK \u2014 The new US Open\u00a0mixed doubles tournament\u00a0drew plenty of criticism for everything from its format to its field.<\/p>\n
With mostly singles players, some who rarely play doubles at all, it felt less like a\u00a0Grand Slam championship\u00a0than an exhibition \u2014 which is what one player referred to it as Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The fast-pace event, with shorter matches and a smaller field, already has two teams halfway to a trophy \u2014 and a $1 million prize. Whoever wins won’t apologize for the way they got it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the official mixed doubles. If we get to the final tomorrow, I\u2019m sure everyone is going to be pretty determined to try to win this thing,\u201d Casper Ruud said.<\/p>\n
Ruud and Iga Swiatek, the No. 3 seeds, easily won their two matches to advance to Wednesday’s semis. So did defending champions Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, the only traditional mixed doubles team in the 16-team field.<\/p>\n
Past US Open singles champions Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu were quickly eliminated with a 4-2, 4-2 loss to Jessica Pegula and Jack Draper, the No. 1-seeded team. The No. 2 seeds, Taylor Fritz and Elena Rybakina, also went quickly in a 4-2, 4-2 loss to Errani and Vavassori.<\/p>\n
Fritz, last year\u2019s US Open runner-up in men\u2019s singles, and Rybakina, a past Wimbledon women\u2019s singles champion, are exactly the types of players the US Tennis Association was seeking when it revamped the tournament.<\/p>\n
Now a 16-team event played over two days, mixed doubles starts well before the singles tournaments begin on Sunday, with organizers believing singles stars would be more interested in playing if it didn\u2019t interfere with their rest and recovery during that event.<\/p>\n
Traditional doubles specialists like Errani and Vavassori were among the\u00a0biggest critics of the changes. Even Karolina Muchova referred to the event as an exhibition during the post-match interview after her team’s opening victory over Venus Williams and Reilly Opelka.<\/p>\n
The prize of $1 million to the winning team would be a huge boost to doubles players, but Errani and Vavassori are the only traditional doubles team in the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also are playing for all the doubles players who could not compete here, so we tried to do our best,\u201d Vavassori said.<\/p>\n
Errani and Vavassori didn’t even know originally if they would get a chance to defend their title in the new format, which gives eight teams automatic spots based on the players’ combined singles rankings. The other spots are wild cards awarded by the USTA.<\/p>\n
The Italians were given one of them and they showed off their skills in a first-round victory that took just 42 minutes. The shortened format allows the matches to speed by, knowing winning teams would have to play twice on the first day to reach the semifinals and finals on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
When Errani and Vavassori won the title last year in Flushing Meadows, it was late in the second week of the tournament in a stadium with plenty of empty seats.<\/p>\n
The new schedule has mixed doubles being played now, when usually the only competitions taking place are the qualifying events for the singles tournaments. Admission onto the grounds during what the USTA calls \u201cfan week\u201d is free, so Louis Armstrong Stadium was packed for the opening match, a far bigger crowd than mixed doubles generally draws.<\/p>\n
Some fans may not have even realized that the match was headed to a second set after Errani and Vavassori took the opener in just 19 minutes. In traditional tennis scoring, they would have had to win 6 games instead of 4 to win the set.<\/p>\n
“I think some people could easily view it as they had to do less work to win the match. Stamina\u2019s definitely less of a factor now that sets are only to four in the first two rounds, but I think it\u2019s good,” Jay Maresco of New York said after watching the Italians’ second-round victory. \u201cIt keeps the pace going. It\u2019s definitely better for the US Open to keep the matches going in and out faster and more people in and out of Armstrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sets to four games with a 10-point match tiebreaker instead of a third set were used through the semifinals. Only the final would resemble a regular match, with sets to six games, tiebreakers at 6-all and a 10-point tiebreak for a third set.<\/p>\n
Teams were still being withdrawn and entered into the final hours, with top-ranked\u00a0Jannik Sinner pulling out\u00a0Tuesday morning after getting ill during his loss to Alcaraz on Monday in the Cincinnati final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 The new US Open\u00a0mixed doubles tournament\u00a0drew plenty of criticism for everything from its format to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-82536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}