The U.S. Open is making a big bet on the potential of mixed doubles, fundamentally changing the format of the tournament in ways that will draw significant curiosity and controversy when the final Grand Slam of the tennis season kicks off in late August.
Here are the four major changes the USTA announced on Tuesday:
Instead of 32 teams, the draw will be limited to 16 with eight of those teams getting in on the basis of combined singles rankings and eight wildcards to be given out by the tournament.
The mixed doubles matches will be played on Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong stadiums the week before the main singles and doubles draws begin while the qualifying tournament is taking place on the outside courts, effectively extending the U.S. Open to a full-fledged three week event.
The matches will be played in a so-called ‘Fast Four’ format, with short sets (first-to-four games with a tiebreaker at 4-4 instead of first-to-six), no-ad scoring and a 10-point tiebreaker instead of a full third set. Only the final will be played with a first-to-six format.
Prize money is being bumped up to $1 million to the winning team as opposed to last year’s $200,000 top prize.
Why are these changes being made? For one primary reason: To encourage more highly-ranked singles players to participate in mixed doubles.
Star power could boost interest in Grand Slam mixed doubles
Long an afterthought at the Grand Slams, mixed doubles is generally relegated to the outside courts and rarely have teams with enough star power to generate much buzz. But anecdotally, there’s clear interest in the concept when players that fans recognize participate.
At last year’s U.S. Open, for instance, there was standing room only seating on Court 11 when the boyfriend-girlfriend team of Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa played (and lost) to Santiago Gonzalez and Giuliana Olmos of Mexico. Andy Murray and Serena Williams teamed up at Wimbledon in 2019 and won a couple rounds, electrifying crowds. And there have been some memorable mixed doubles matches at national team events like the Olympics and Hopman Cup, where Williams and Roger Federer faced off against each other in a U.S.-Switzerland match in 2019.
‘It truly is something unique in sport where you have the best athletes, male and female, competing on the same field of play at the same time against one another,’ USTA executive director Lew Sherr told The Athletic. ‘It doesn’t exist in other professional sports.’
But it only happens rarely in tennis because the WTA and ATP tours don’t intersect other than at the Grand Slams and a few other 1000-level events, which very rarely offer mixed doubles other than some exhibition play due to a variety of factors including scheduling and court availability.
At the Grand Slams, though, players generally either focus on singles or doubles. Sometimes top women like Coco Gauff will enter doubles (she won the 2024 French Open title with Katerina Siniakova while also advancing to the semifinals in singles), but rarely will a highly-ranked singles player enter all three events these days. It’s simply too demanding physically, especially for the men playing best-of-five sets in singles.
There have also been situations where top players may enter mixed doubles but then withdraw as they advance in singles. That’s what happened last year when Emma Raducanu bailed on her partnership with Murray at his final Wimbledon, citing a sore wrist as she reached the fourth round of the singles draw.
With the U.S. Open’s changes, that shouldn’t happen in the future unless there’s a legitimate injury. Though some singles players may not be interested in mixed doubles, the tournament will take place while they are all on site anyway preparing for the main part of the event to start.
US Open changes will be criticized by some purists
The changes will have some detractors, though, particularly among the tour’s doubles specialists who will be largely shut out of an opportunity to play for a Grand Slam title.
Former doubles No. 1 Paul McNamee slammed the decision, writing on X that the U.S. Open ‘will not produce a bona fide mixed doubles winner. Devalued from a Grand Slam title to an (exhibition). Let’s just say I’m in shock.’
While McNamee’s criticism will resonate with some purists, it’s not hard to understand why the USTA views mixed doubles as prime ground for experimentation and growing the game – not to mention selling some tickets.
In its previous form, mixed doubles was essentially filler programming for the tens of thousands of people who roam the grounds and outer courts of the U.S. Open with rare bursts of interest when a superstar team would turn up.
What the USTA can now hope for is, for instance, someone like Gauff teaming up with another American star like Taylor Fritz or Ben Shelton and drawing huge crowds to Arthur Ashe Stadium for a match against, theoretically, players like Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka.
It’s been proven over and over again that mixed doubles can be a big hit with fans when the right players are in the draw. By incentivizing their participation, the U.S. Open believes it can turn an afterthought during Slam weeks into a big event on its own.