Mixed Reactions
On the star-studded provisional entry list to the 2025 U.S. Open's newfangled mixed doubles tournament.
The U.S. Open’s revamp of its mixed doubles tournament to showcase singles stars, which has already generated remarkable amounts of chatter despite still being two months away, started to take clearer form yesterday with a release of a provisional entry list.
I reported in my Roland Garros notebook column a few days ago on Bounces that the USTA was quite excited about the star power it was seeing on its early entry lists, and that bore out in the names of the 16 pairs the tournament released on Tuesday, which include 9 of the WTA singles Top 10 and 9 of the ATP singles Top 10:
“Seeing the teams that have already put their names on the entry list makes us all incredibly excited,” Lew Sherr, the USTA’s outgoing chief executive, said in the tournament’s press release. “It shows that the players are behind what we are trying to do, and we know that the fans will love it.”
Here’s the entry list, in order of their combined singles ranking this week. There are eight spots determined by ranking; those are above the red line in the below table. The remaining eight pairs in the draw will be decided and distributed via wild cards.
This may not be the final look of the draw, of course: the entry list will remain open until July 28th, which means new teams will be added. Teams could also drop out before the competition, of course, especially because the mixed doubles competition starts less than 24 hours after the goofy Monday finals in Cincinnati.
But there’s still a lot to take in from this early glimpse, so here are some quick reactions to what we have here:
Yes, This Is Real, They Promise
I was amused by the header line that the U.S. Open used on its social media graphic of the announcement, which clarified and confirmed that this mixed doubles event is, if you had any doubts, “an official Grand Slam tournament,” and not just some typical pre-tournament exhibition.
That Instagram post already has more than 40,000 likes, incidentally; can you imagine how low the social media engagement would’ve been for any other recent mixed doubles entry list?
No Coco
The most notable absence on these lists, by far, is the most popular tennis player in America: Coco Gauff, ranked No. 2 in the world and fresh off a second major singles title at the French Open, isn’t on this provisional list. The one player who the U.S. Open probably wants most of all is the one they didn’t get.1
This is a surprising omission, especially because Gauff has played more doubles than most of the players who did enter, but she did say at a press conference in Dubai back in February that she didn’t expect to play.
“For me personally, I most likely won't be participating, just because it's not a great time for me,” Gauff said then. “I just think it will take away for the preparation from U.S. Open.”
But Gauff could still change her mind of course, and could wait until closer to the competition to see how her summer has shaped up in terms of match play and workload. If she does decide she wants to play, she could surely enter with anyone and have the U.S. Open hand over an instant wild card.2
Some Fun, Some Huh?
Like in any doubles draw, there’s a mix of pairs with clear connections, and others who don’t seem to have any apparent commonality at all.
Friend of the show Ricky Dimon posted an alternate ranking of the pairs on Tuesday, “based on number of words ever spoken to each other”:
There are some things to quibble with in Ricky’s order, almost certainly, but the general gist is right—especially the bottom two. How on earth did Navarro and Sinner find each other here? When Jack Draper was asked yesterday at Queen’s Club how he paired up with Zheng Qinwen, he replied that he had “seen her around.”
Also, I immediately harkened back to Sam Querrey’s 2024 prediction that Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu would be “publicly dating” by the 2024 U.S. Open.
This mixed doubles partnership isn’t anything like them dating, to be sure, but it is at least a public attachment of a sort.
British press being British press, Alcaraz received several questions about Raducanu yesterday at Queen’s Club.
“I know Emma since a really long time ago, so we know each other,” Alcaraz said. “I have really good relationship with her. So it's just gonna be interesting. You know, obviously both, you know, we are gonna enjoy, for sure. I will try, you know, to put my doubles skill on it. We will try to win. But obviously it's going to be really, really fun….I was thinking that I couldn't play better if it wasn't with Emma. I just asked Emma if she wants to play doubles with me. Yeah, I made that special request.”
Any Other Takers?
There’s a whole lot of star power on this entry list, but also notably, for now, this is it. The U.S. Open’s press release said that “in total, 16 teams have entered as of 5:00pm EST on June 16,” which would mean that all 16 teams are included on the above list.
This would imply, surprisingly, that zero other teams had entered so far, including all other well-ranked singles players and any of the many doubles specialists who have grumbled about being excluded. If the aggrieved doubles specialists don’t even enter, they’re not even making the tournament officially reject them.
The Reigning Champs Are Here (For Now)
The most striking inclusion in the list, I think, is the one doubles specialist pair who did enter: Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, who are both the recent mixed doubles champions at Roland Garros and last year’s champions in New York.
These Italians are ranked 6th and 13th in doubles, respectively, but because their singles rankings are both well into triple digits, Errani and Vavassori would need one of the eight wild cards to get into this newfangled U.S. Open mixed doubles competition.
Because they don’t have the singles rankings to guarantee their own entry, their fates will remain up to the tournament until the end. Will they get in?
The pros: they would be a fascinating inclusion in this draw for several reasons. Firstly, they were the loudest about complaining about the new format when it was announced back in February, calling it a “pseudo-exhibition.”
When I asked Errani a few weeks ago in Paris about the prospect of playing U.S. Open mixed doubles, she seemed pessimistic:
“I don't know,” Errani said. “We asked, we asked it and we don't know yet. But for the moment, it's no. I mean, the mentality in the U.S. Open is to to have only singles players; they don't want doubles players. Maybe they are afraid of playing against doubles players? I don't know. But I hope they let us play.
“We are the champions there and we want to have the opportunity to play it again,” Errani continued. “And it's really sad for us to see that kind of things. I mean, let singles players play, but why are you taking out doubles players? They are the specialists on that. It's like if you do Olympics high jump and you don't let the high jumpers jump and put the basketball players to jump. What is that?! I mean, did you ever see that? I mean, this is crazy, no? But we cannot do anything. I mean, they decide everything. And we will see: we hope to play, but it's not on our hands.”
The U.S. Open might’ve headed off a bunch of grumbling if they had announced from the jump that they would give a wild card to Errani and Vavassori as the event’s defending champions. Having them in the draw would provide a token mixed doubles team, and would also make for a big moment of credibility for the concept if and when they are dethroned by a pair of singles players in the competition.
The cons: Errani and Vavassori could also prove an existential risk for this new venture: what if they win it all? If the one team of doubles specialists rolls to the title, wouldn’t that undermine the USTA’s whole premise, and make calls to include more doubles specialists even louder next year?
This is the risk-reward the USTA has to consider. If you don’t want a team to win a competition, you shouldn’t invite them in the first place—learn from The Amazing Race: All-Stars’ mistake of including Eric and Danielle, who no one wanted or cared about, but who won it all regardless.3
Including the Italians would up the stakes for all involved, so in that sense, for the sake of drama, I hope the U.S. Open does it.
Thanks for reading Bounces! -Ben
The one Top 10 ATP player not on the list, if you were wondering, is No. 9 Holger Rune.
Here’s an idea: maybe Gauff could pick someone who wouldn’t have a shot of getting in otherwise, like her buddy Chris Eubanks? And if Eubanks, who likely will be outside the main draw cut in New York, could use his suddenly conflicting mixed doubles participation during qualifying as a strong reason to snag a main draw singles wild card, that could be a doubly huge win for him. Those are the sort of machinations tennis is all about, after all.
Justice for Rob and Amber with those goofy envelopes.
Speaking of goofy, they're playing sets to four games, not six, and using no-ad scoring, right? This may be fun, but it's borderline shameful to claim this will be a legitimate, official, trophies-and-checks-and-history-books mixed-doubles competition at a Grand Slam event.
(And didn't Rybakina and Fritz win the mixed doubles exhibition at Indian Wells? They must have exchanged a few words.)
disappointed that osaka wants to play with scumbag, kyrgios.