Williams and Alcaraz shine briefly in US Open mixed doubles revival

Fifteen thousand people filled Arthur Ashe Stadium on a Tuesday in late August to watch two of tennis's most recognizable figures take the court together for the first time. Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion who had stepped away from competitive tennis four years earlier, was back. Carlos Alcaraz, the seven-time major winner sidelined since April with a wrist injury, was playing his first match in months. The pairing was exactly what the US Open's organizers had hoped for when they redesigned the mixed doubles format a year ago—star power, narrative weight, and the kind of crowd energy that fills a stadium.

Williams had not competed at her home slam since 2022, when she "evolved away" from the sport. Alcaraz was born five years after she won the mixed doubles title here in 1998 alongside Max Mirnyi. The gap between their eras felt almost absurd, yet there they were, feeding off each other's energy. When Alcaraz was interviewed during a changeover after their opening victory against Britain's Lloyd Glasspool and New Zealand's Erin Routliffe, he seemed almost starstruck. "I'm playing next to the one and only Serena Williams," he said, "so what else can I do? Just enjoy and try to do the things she told me to do." They won that match 5-3, 4-1, closing with eight wins in the final nine games.

But the format that brought them together—and that drew the crowds—has been contentious from the start. The revamped mixed doubles pits the sport's biggest singles names against established doubles specialists, many of whom had to grind through two qualifying rounds just to enter the main draw. On this first day, all four pairs of dedicated doubles players lost to teams built around singles stars. Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka, the men's 24-time major winner and the world's top-ranked woman, lasted just 49 minutes before falling to Henry Patten and Katerina Siniakova. The tournament's organizers got what they wanted: a semi-final lineup of singles players and their partners, not the doubles circuit's established names.

Alcaraz's return to competitive tennis came with visible rust. He double-faulted on his opening point, nerves evident as he stepped onto the court for the first time in nearly five months. "I almost forgot how it feels," he said afterward. Williams, by contrast, seemed energized by the moment. "It's always amazing to be here," she reflected. "I never expected to be back on this court. It was just a really cool moment. I never thought this would happen." The two fed off each other's presence, playing with visible joy, roaring encouragement after each point won.

Their run ended in the quarter-finals when Italy's Flavio Cobolli and Switzerland's Belinda Bencic defeated them 5-4 in a tiebreak, then 4-1. By that match, Alcaraz's rustiness had become harder to ignore. He wore a compression sleeve on his right arm, his appearance noticeably different from earlier in the year. The loss was decisive, convincing—not the kind of performance that suggested he was ready for the singles draw beginning in three weeks. But for Alcaraz, the point was never to win the mixed doubles. It was to play, to remember what competition felt like, to shake off the months away. In that, the partnership with Williams served its purpose, even if it lasted only two matches. The format had delivered its marquee moment. Whether it had delivered anything useful to the players themselves remained an open question.