Alcaraz and Williams win then exit US Open mixed doubles as singles stars dominate
Carlos Alcaraz and Serena Williams opened their US Open mixed doubles campaign with a victory inside Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday but were beaten in the quarter-finals at the tournament in New York on the same day.
The pairing, whose combined total of Grand Slam singles titles is 30, reunited a returning Williams at her home slam after a four-year absence and gave Alcaraz his first competitive match since April following a wrist injury; the event’s revamped mixed doubles format, which allows direct entry for top-ranked singles players and wildcards, has drawn criticism for favouring singles stars over established doubles specialists.
Against Great Britain’s Lloyd Glasspool and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe, the 44-year-old Williams and seven-time major winner Alcaraz were greeted by about 15,000 inside Arthur Ashe Stadium and won their opener 5-3 4-1, taking eight of the final nine games to close out the match.
Alcaraz acknowledged nerves after the win, saying: "I'm playing next to the one and only Serena Williams, so what else can I do? Just enjoy and try to do the things she told me to do." He added: "I think everyone could see I was really nervous, I double-faulted on the first point," and said, "It [took] just a couple of games [to settle] and she made it very easy for me to enjoy it and try to go for it." Williams reflected on her return, saying: "It's always amazing to be here. I never expected to be back on this court," and, "It was just a really cool moment. I never thought this would happen."
Alcaraz and Williams were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Italy’s world number six Flavio Cobolli and Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic, who won 5-4 (7-4) 4-1, while all four specialist doubles pairings were beaten by teams of singles players on Tuesday and none of those four doubles pairs reached the last four.
Other headline results included Gael Monfils and Elina Svitolina knocking out the top-ranked doubles team of Henry Patten and Katerina Siniakova after the latter had advanced to the quarter-finals, and Patten and Siniakova earlier ousting Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka in a match that lasted 49 minutes; Monfils said: "I'm a big fan of her game and mentality. Sometimes I think she's ice and I'm the fire. "We needed to the find the balance. We did today."
The semi-final line-up will feature Cobolli and Bencic against Monfils and Svitolina, while Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev will face Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik in the other semi-final, with those matches scheduled for Wednesday.
Williams’s participation in mixed doubles came despite her not contesting singles at the US Open after a knee injury at Wimbledon, and Alcaraz, who wore a compression sleeve on his right arm and appeared in his first match since April, said the outing provided valuable court time even though "it did not really tell us anything about his chances of remaining in New York for the singles final in just under three weeks time."
