NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic will have to hope to win another U.S. Open singles title. They were no match for two of the top doubles players in tennis.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka and Djokovic started strong but couldn\u2019t hold on, falling 1-4, 4-2 (10-2) to Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten on Tuesday in the first round of the mixed doubles tournament.<\/p>\n
Siniakova, ranked No. 1 in women\u2019s doubles, ended the match with an ace while serving to Djokovic.<\/p>\n
\u201cKat acing Novak on match point was pretty fun,\u201d Patten said after the match, before a quick turnaround to play their quarterfinal match against the married pair of Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils.<\/p>\n
Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz were in action later in the first round of the 16-team event, which offers a $1 million prize to the winning team.<\/p>\n
The tournament was overhauled last year in an effort to get more top singles players to compete. It was moved to a two-day event well before the singles main draw begins, with a scoring format that guarantees quick matches that shouldn\u2019t tax the players too much.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka, the two-time defending U.S. Open women\u2019s champion, and 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic are exactly the types of players the U.S. Tennis Association was seeking. They had the No. 1 seed based on the lowest combined singles ranking of any team, but their loss was far from an upset.<\/p>\n
Patten is ranked No. 1 in men\u2019s doubles, and he and Siniakova turned things around after Sabalenka and Djokovic stormed through the first set in 12 minutes, then got an early break in the second.<\/p>\n
Svitolina and Monfils routed Alex Eala and Felix Auger-Aliassime 4-1, 4-1. Also, Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik edged Kristina Mladenovic and Marcelo Arevalo 4-1, 2-4 (10-7).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full tennis coverage here <\/p>\n
Brian Mahoney, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic will have to hope to win another U.S. Open…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-871132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871132","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=871132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}