Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz exit US Open mixed doubles in quarter-finals
Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz returned to Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday for the reimagined US Open mixed doubles, winning their opening match before losing in the quarter-finals to Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli. The pairing were defeated 5-4 (4), 4-1 in the headline attraction of the revamped event.
Williams emerged from the tunnel at half past three to the roars of more than 10,000 spectators, 1,453 days after the defeat by Ajla Tomljanovic that had appeared to end her career. She and Alcaraz warmed up in matching purple-and-black Nike kits while public-address announcer Andy Taylor rattled off her accolades. Together they carried 30 grand slam singles titles, a record for a mixed-doubles team at a major. Although the tournament was still officially in qualifying week, crowds had swelled to main-draw proportions along the boardwalk from the Mets-Willets Point station to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
Alcaraz, returning from a hiatus of his own due to a wrist injury in the spring, wore a white sleeve and double-faulted on the opening point of the day. The pair dropped three of the first four games but then won eight of the final nine to beat the British–New Zealand team of Lloyd Glasspool and Erin Routliffe 5-3, 4-1. “I never expected to be back on this court,” Williams said after the first match. “I never thought this would happen.”
That momentum proved short-lived as Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli ended Williams and Alcaraz’s run 5-4 (4), 4-1 in the quarter-final. Williams was aggressive at the net and served the opening game of the quarter-final ahead of Alcaraz, a rarity in mixed doubles; the match finished after 55 minutes.
When the pair left the court, Williams might have been second-guessing her decision to decline the singles wildcard organisers had kept open for her before giving it to Sofia Kenin. The outcome underlined the trade-offs of the new format: a standalone mixed-doubles slot, abbreviated scoring and swift, decisive matches.
Last year’s overhaul cut the field to 16, raised the top prize to $1m and adopted early-round rules of four-game sets, no-ad scoring and a 10-point decider, with only Wednesday’s final returning to six-game sets. The format has already trapped other star tandems: top seeds Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka lost their opening match on Ashe to Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten, who in turn fell to the married couple Elina Svitolina and Gaël Monfils 5-4 (6), 4-5 (3), 10-8; the victors then kissed and embraced and Monfils said, “Happy wife, happy life.”
Svitolina and Monfils are two victories from a trophy and a seven-figure windfall when the event concludes on Wednesday night. Williams’s stay at the reworked mixed doubles was brief but, for the New York crowd, it was enough to make the US Open feel as though it had arrived earlier than scheduled.