By Alix Ramsay
M’learned colleague, Steph Myles, calls it the “mixed singles” while the USTA calls it the mixed doubles; we wait to see what history will call this all-new, singing-and-dancing event that finishes three days before the US Open proper begins.
Played over two days with first-to-four-game sets, no ad scoring and 10-point match tiebreak replacing a third set, it is not grand slam mixed doubles as we know it. That much we do know.
Contested by 16 teams of – predominantly – singles players, it has pulling power with the casual fans and a sprinkling of star dust for the television cameras. Sadly for the organisers, the sparkle soon faded for the players.
Compared to the original line-up announced at the start of the summer, the end product looked rather different. A combination of injury, illness, dodgy form or bizarre tournament scheduling (yes, we mean you, Cincinnati) caused the cast list to change daily.
Jannik Sinner was originally scheduled to play with Emma Navarro but ended up with Katerina Siniakova (which would have been a grand pairing). And then he pulled out after feeling as sick as a dog during the first five games of the Cincinnati final (all of which he lost) and throwing in the towel to Carlos Alcaraz on Monday afternoon. If he could not finish a Masters 1000 final, no one was putting money on him turning up to play mixed on Tuesday lunchtime.
Jack Draper ended up partnering Jess Pegula (again, a stroke of good fortune) – his third partner since the grand opening announcement – Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa fell by the wayside last month (rumours immediately spread that their withdrawal was due to them breaking up as a couple); Jasmine Paolini was due to play with Lorenzo Musetti but when she reached the Cincy final, due to be played at 6pm on Monday, she pulled the plug on that and Musetti ended up playing with Caty McNally instead. The list of withdrawals went on and on.
By the morning of the first day, there was still one vacant spot in the draw (to replace the ailing Sinner and his fit but now single partner Siniakova). The official USTA briefing explained that “their place in the draw will be filled by an alternate team with the highest combined singles ranking that signs in by 10:30 a.m. today [Tuesday], with priority to those that had been entered by the initial July 28 deadline.” In other words, anyone that the punters may have heard of and who has a bat and a clean pair of shorts, please come to the PE teacher’s office by 10.30 and you will be in. That team turned out to be Danielle Collins and Christian Harrison. Who knew? Especially as Harrison hasn’t had a singles ranking for the past two years.
Then there was the small matter of the tennis itself.
Now then, some singles players are also very good doubles players. But not all of them. Most of them, especially the men, only play doubles to get a feel for the court conditions when they switch surface or if they are just back from an injury break. And some only play when it really, really matters – and even then, no matter how hard they try, they still look like singles players who have wandered on to the wrong court.
Remember Alcaraz playing doubles with Rafa Nadal at the Olympics? Carlitos was desperate to do well: this was Rafa’s last Olympics, it was Rafa’s final year, there was the chance of a medal. Carlos was up for it. But as soon as they started there was that sudden realisation that the then Roland-Garros and Wimbledon champion was out of his depth.
Nadal, who was a good doubles player, would be in mid-point and look round to find that his partner was nowhere to be seen. Where had he gone? Oh, there he was: in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rafa and his fragile body could carry them through two rounds of this make-it-up-as-you-go-along stuff before they were found out by Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram in the quarter-finals. And that was when the Spaniards were trying their damnedest.
As the US Open hit-and-giggle championships began, we almost had our first medical casualty before lunchtime when Musetti went for the same overhead as McNally and almost took her out with his smash. It worked out fine in the end as they beat Naomi Osaka and Gael Monfils 5-3, 4-2. That marathon lasted a whole 68 minutes. And by the time they had finished, Sarah Errani and Andrea Vavassori were showered and heading for a light lunch having blitzed Elena Rybakina and Taylor Fritz 4-2, 4-2 in a very tidy 42 minutes.
That would be the same Taylor Fritz who had been telling the world just how excited he was to be involved in this fabulous new tournament. Presumably he was just as excited as Frances Tiafoe (whose men’s doubles record for the year is played six, lost five): Big Foe talked meaningfully about having “serious matches” in the week before the singles draw began. And then he and Maddie Keys got sploshed in the first round by Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud 4-1, 4-2 in 39 minutes. Not that serious, then, Frances.
As an aside: in the marquee partnerships, Swiatek and Ruud are more a pairing for the purist: you have to love tennis to love them. Their approach is not so much hit-and-giggle as wallop-and-wince. But if it works for them, who are we to argue. And they became the first semi-finalists with a 4-1, 4-2 demolition of Musetti and McNally.
They were closely followed into the last four Vavassori and Errani. Their 4-1, 5-4 win over Andrey Rublev and Karolina Muchova ensured that they will now take home $200,000 – which is what they earned for winning the title last year when the matches were a proper length and the event was a proper grand slam championship. Which is why we are hoping they win it again this year.
By the time the top seeds, Draper and Pegula, had brushed aside Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu 4-2, 4-2, the pattern had been set.
Draper’s doubles career is limited, to say the least: he has only played 13 tour-level doubles matches in his life. But in Pegula, he had a former doubles No.1 as a partner. She knew exactly what she was doing as she steered Draper past the only pair of grand slam singles champions in the draw. Doubles players know how to play doubles; singles players don’t.
These jolly japes were set to continue for hours and the creeping jet lag was beginning to take effect. It was time to go home. It may have been fun for the punters but it was not a proper grand slam championship. It was time to go home.