Serena Williams walked back on to Arthur Ashe Stadium for the first time since 2022 and won a tennis match. Ninety minutes later she was out of the tournament. The US Open’s revamped mixed doubles championship gave the 44-year-old and her wild-card partner Carlos Alcaraz exactly one day of competition on Tuesday, and they filled it: a 5-3, 4-1 first-round win over doubles specialists Erin Routliffe and Lloyd Glasspool, then a 5-4(4), 4-1 quarter-final defeat to fourth seeds Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli.
“It’s always such an amazing place to be here,” Williams said. “I never expected to be back on this court, so it was just a really cool moment.”
Two comebacks sharing one court
The pairing was engineered for exactly this — a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion who has won six US Open titles alongside the defending men’s champion, both operating on wild cards in a two-day, $1m event compressed into the week before the main draw begins.
For Alcaraz, the practical value was obvious. Tuesday was his first competitive tennis since a right wrist injury in April, and the mixed doubles format — sets played to four games, a 10-point match tie-break instead of a third set — offered a low-mileage way to find his timing before his singles campaign starts on 30 August. The seven-time major winner served well in the opening round and struggled to protect the middle against Bencic and Cobolli, a pair with far more recent match play.
For Williams, the calculation was different. She has not played a competitive singles match at Flushing Meadows since her 2022 farewell, and her only previous mixed doubles title here came in 1998 with Max Mirnyi, before Alcaraz was born. Her serve still produced free points; the recovery between them, against opponents 15 and 20 years younger, is where the gap showed. In the first-set tie-break, Bencic and Cobolli won four of the last five points by attacking the return.
The seeds were the story nobody planned
The USTA built the event around star power, and by Tuesday evening almost none of it was left. Top seeds Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic took the opening set 4-1 against Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten, then lost 1-4, 4-2, 10-2 to a pair who had come through qualifying and happen to be ranked No.1 in the world in women’s and men’s doubles respectively.
“You could see in the first set it was just big serves and bigger shots,” Siniakova said. “But I think we want to do it for doubles. It was a great turnaround.”
She was not alone. The rest of the first round removed:
- Two-time defending champions Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, beaten by Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev
- Second seeds Jessica Pegula and Taylor Fritz, beaten 4-2, 4-1 by Diana Shnaider and Casper Ruud
- Third seeds Amanda Anisimova and Learner Tien, beaten 5-3, 4-2 by Emma Navarro and Tommy Paul
Siniakova and Patten then lost the quarter-final anyway, going down 5-4(6), 4-5(3), 10-8 to the married pair of Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils — a result that says as much about the format’s volatility as it does about either team. “When we warmed up this morning, I told my coach it would be amazing if we can win just a few games,” Svitolina said. Monfils, playing what is expected to be his final Grand Slam at 40, offered the shorter version: “Happy wife, happy life.”
What Wednesday tells us about the experiment
The semi-finals pit Svitolina and Monfils against Bencic and Cobolli, and Andreeva and Rublev against Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik, who beat Navarro and Paul 4-1, 5-3 after entering as the last team accepted into the draw. “Already in the second match, we played way better, way more relaxed and aggressive,” Muchova said. The final reverts to standard six-game sets, with $1m to the winners, $500,000 to the runners-up and $120,000 banked by Williams and Alcaraz for reaching the last eight.
That is the tension the US Open now has to resolve. The reformatted event was criticised on announcement for shutting out doubles professionals in favour of singles names, and its first two rounds were won overwhelmingly by the players who actually specialise in the discipline. Tuesday sold tickets and filled Ashe on the strength of Williams and Alcaraz. It was decided by everyone else.
**Sources:** [ESPN](https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/49725177/serena-williams-carlos-alcaraz-mixed-doubles-us-open), [WTA Tennis](https://www.wtatennis.com/news/4566378/us-open-mixed-doubles-live-siniakova-patten-oust-top-seeds-sabalenka-djokovic), [Sky Sports](https://www.skysports.com/tennis/news/12110/13577085/serena-williams-and-carlos-alcaraz-exit-us-open-mixed-doubles-in-quarter-finals-top-seeds-novak-djokovic-and-aryna-sabalenka-out-in-first-round), [Yahoo Sports](https://sports.yahoo.com/tennis/breaking-news/article/serena-williams-carlos-alcaraz-drop-quarterfinal-match-after-opening-round-win-in-us-open-mixed-doubles-204210634.html)
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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