 "FILE - Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, who won US Open mixed doubles in 2024, have criticised the organisers' move to revamp mixed doubles for this year's tournament. AP")
Tennis will witness another radical change come the 2025 US Open later this year. It was only a couple of weeks ago when the United States Tennis Association (USTA) extended its main draw to 15 days. The tournament is set to start on a Sunday (24 August) and the men’s singles final is to be played on 7 September, which is also a Sunday. This is in line with Australian Open and French Open, which have also made similar changes.
Going one step further, the USTA has now introduced a new mixed doubles format, in a bid to draw more prominent singles players into playing mixed doubles tennis.
While in the past, top singles players featured prominently in doubles categories of Grand Slams, this has come down over the years due to a hectic tennis calendar and increasing prize money in singles competitions.
The legendary John McEnroe was someone who excelled in both singles and doubles, winning 77 career titles in each category. Martina Navratilova has 41 major titles in women’s doubles and mixed doubles combined, as compared to her 18 Grand Slam titles in singles. But there are no active examples like this.
To attract singles players in mixed doubles competitions, the US Open organisers have introduced prize money worth $1 million as well as a new shorter format.
New format of mixed doubles at US Open explained
Under the new format, the US Open mixed doubles tournament will take place across two days, on 19 and 20 August, before the tournament proper begins on 24 August. As usual, 16 mixed doubles teams, which is 32 players, will take part in the draw. While eight teams will be seeded on the basis of their joint singles ranking, the other eight will receive wildcard entries.
But here’s the biggest catch. The matches will be much shorter than usual. While the matches will remain as best-of-three sets, each set will head to the tie-breaks when the scores are level at 4-4, and not at 6-6 as was the case. This is barring the final, which will follow the traditional rule of 6-6 and a tie-break.
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New format draws criticism from players
The new mixed doubles format has drawn criticism from many players. Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, who won the mixed doubles title in New York last year, have called it a “profound injustice”.
“Making decisions just following the logic of profit is profoundly wrong in some situations,” the duo said in a joint statement, as per BBC.
“In the last few weeks we received the news that the US Open mixed doubles tournament will be completely turned upside down, cancelled and replaced with a pseudo-exhibition focused only on entertainment and show. We see it as a profound injustice that disrespects an entire category of players," they added.
Indian tennis star Rohan Bopanna said that this is an opportunity lost for tennis players from the country to showcase their talents and impress fans. “By restricting entry to singles-ranked players, the 2025 US Open Mixed Doubles effectively sidelines India from contention, denying millions of Indian fans the chance to see their country represented on one of tennis’ biggest stages,” he was quoted as saying by Sportskeeda.
Australian tennis player Ellen Perez also slammed the decision. “Tell us that you think doubles players are trash, that tradition is overrated and job opportunity is a thing of the past without actually saying it,” she wrote on “X”.
USTA CEO Lew Sherr knows that there is a section of disappointed players, but added that this is being done to revive the interest in doubles globally.
“Yes, there’s some that will be disappointed that they won’t have the opportunity to compete in this event,” he told The Associated Press.
“On the other side, we know that there’s a huge opportunity to create more interest globally in doubles and there may be a cascading effect here, that the mixed creates a bigger spotlight on the men’s and women’s doubles when we get into that portion of the tournament.
“We’ll have to see how that plays out, but we do know that our mixed competition historically has been competing with the men’s and women’s singles, and so the fields have suffered and the attention has suffered. This is a chance to give it a massive spotlight over two nights,” he added.