U.S. Open announces mixed doubles direct entries, wild cards include Alcaraz and Raducanu

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Now the U.S. Open mixed doubles fun can really begin.

Heavy on glitz and singles stars, the 16-team tournament will be lighter on doubles players who have honed their skills on that tour. With registration closed, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) has announced 14 of the 16 teams, eight of them direct entries and six of them wild cards.

Last week, the USTA announced 25 high-profile teams as entries, but fewer than a third had a shot of making it straight into the new tournament, which will be held Aug. 19 and 20 at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in New York City. It will conclude four days before the singles main draws begin.

Teams with players who have the eight lowest combined singles rankings gain automatic entry. There are automatic places for defending men’s singles champion Jannik Sinner, Wimbledon champion Iga Świątek and last year’s U.S. Open finalist Taylor Fritz, but Carlos Alcaraz’s partnership with Emma Raducanu, and 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic and compatriot Olga Danilović, both required wild cards.

It’s tough getting into a mixed doubles Grand Slam these days — well, this one, at least, Kateřina Siniaková and Marcelo Arévalo, two of the best doubles players in the world, are on the outside looking in.

*Belinda Bencic entered with a special ranking of world No. 15. She is currently world No. 20.

The first six wild card entries are as follows:

• Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz
• Madison Keys and Frances Tiafoe
• Olga Danilović and Novak Djokovic
• Taylor Townsend and Ben Shelton
• Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori
• Venus Williams and Reilly Opelka

The decision on the remaining two wild cards will be a test of the U.S. Open’s less-than-unspoken priorities for a mixed doubles event designed to pack two stadiums over two days and draw eyeballs to the ESPN coverage of the event. That means getting the most famous stars to play, with $1 million for the winning team, eschewing any concerns about who is actually the best at the discipline.

Townsend being the new world No. 1 in doubles, and Siniaková being the person she overtook to get there, is already secondary to the stardom factor. Townsend and Shelton getting a wild card has more to do with their pairing, bringing together the hot new thing of American men’s tennis and a three-time Grand Slam semifinalist with a legitimate doubles star. They may actually be a good pick to win the thing. They played mixed in New York together before, reaching the semifinals in 2023, and Shelton played doubles this year with Rohan Bopanna, a former men’s world No. 1.

The Alcaraz and Raducanu partnership is gold dust, and both have endorsement deals with Evian, which is a U.S. Open sponsor. Williams, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and 45-year-old Washington Open wild card who thrilled crowds in D.C., is an easy pick.

She beat the world No. 35 Peyton Stearns in singles and won a doubles match with Hailey Baptiste. If a Williams sister is offering up her services to a tournament, she usually gets in. And there’s the small matter of her 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, two of them in mixed.

One player missing is Aryna Sabalenka, whose proposed partner, Grigor Dimitrov, withdrew with the pectoral muscle injury he sustained at Wimbledon.

One of the most compelling athletes in the sport, Sabalenka has been on something of a reputation-enhancement campaign since her implosion in the French Open final and during the ensuing news conference, when she said Coco Gauff didn’t win as much as she lost. It was raw, honest and poor form all at once, and it garnered a lot of online attention, most of it negative. She would be in line for a wild card if she entered, but with whom?

What to do with Osaka and Kyrgios, who have not been setting the scoreboards alight for some time but had signed up for the tournament? When it comes to recognition in the wider sporting world, there is no argument against their inclusion. But Kyrgios has barely played professional tennis this year.

Doubles players have criticized the USTA for devaluing a Grand Slam trophy. USTA executives have responded that not enough people were watching or even thinking about mixed doubles. Nothing, they argue, devalues an event more than that.

So out went the 32-team tournament played alongside the singles events. In came first-to-four-games sets, with no-ad scoring and a match tiebreak at a set apiece. The business will get done well ahead of the singles, giving players a competitive warm-up and the broader tournament a huge promotional boost. The start of the U.S. Open proper on Aug. 24 should not take anyone by surprise.

The big surprise might be if all the players who have raised their hands to play actually play. The biggest complication might be the singles finals of the Cincinnati Open, which will take place on Monday, Aug. 18, the day before the mixed doubles start. Two years ago, Alcaraz and Djokovic slugged it out for nearly four hours in the men’s final, in the intense Ohio summer heat. Would they have gotten on a plane and flown in for mixed doubles the next morning? Action is supposed to get underway beginning at 11 a.m. Tuesday the 19th.

Theoretically, the USTA will have a few teams on reserve as injuries and scheduling conflicts arise. Who’s going to agree to that? Maybe the actual doubles players of renown, people such as Siniaková and Arévalo, or Desirae Krawczyk and Evan King, or Hsieh Su-wei and Jan Zieliński. $1 million is $1 million after all — and the actual doubles players think they have a built-in advantage.  Olympic results from last year go some distance toward proving that point.

With two wild cards not to be announced until later — and considering no one asked for this input — here’s who seems most likely to gain entry.

• Aryna Sabalenka and TK. The women’s world No. 1 has to be at the party, but with whom? João Fonseca is free.
• Kateřina Siniaková and Marcelo Arévalo. Tennis elegance and doubles legitimacy.

And then:

• Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios. Osaka, a two-time U.S. Open winner and four-time Grand Slam champion, should get to play with anyone, even a faded star such as Kyrgios, who remains a magnet for casual fans.
• Katie Boulter and Alex de Minaur. They’re engaged, they’re the adults in the room. Lower the velvet rope for these two.
• Gaby Dabrowski and Félix Auger-Aliassime. Consider it an olive branch to Canada.
• Iva Jović and Jenson Brooksby. Team California can bring more youth vibes with Jović, who is 17.

(Top photo: Max Cisotti / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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