In last week’s column, I mentioned the US Open’s revamped mixed event which has dropped into the small world of doubles like a brick into a pond. Despite the ripples of discontent, and acknowledging the blatant lack of respect for doubles players, I said that if top singles stars could be convinced to compete, ‘the end would justify the means’.
After speaking to Britain’s No1 doubles player Henry Patten over the weekend, I am convinced I was wrong – the idea has merit but the hatcheting of the format and sidelining of traditional exponents are unnecessary.
To briefly recap: in 2025 the mixed doubles event in the final Grand Slam of the season will be brought forward to the week before the traditional fortnight, so-called ‘fan week’. The draw has been severed from 32 pairs to 16 and sets will be played first to four games, rather than six. And here’s the kicker: qualification will be based on singles, not doubles, rankings, with eight wildcards.
The idea is that by trimming the length of the event and holding it in week zero, the biggest names in the game will be happy to compete before the serious business begins. It will be screened in prime time on ESPN.
It is essentially a souped up version of the US Open’s Mixed Madness exhibition event which was a great success last year, with four pairs playing down to a winner – which conveniently enough was tennis ‘it’ couple Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa.
It all sounds like good fun but Patten made the point that the US Open could have expanded on an already successful formula without cannibalizing the mixed doubles Grand Slam competition.
Reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open doubles champion Henry Patten (left) tells Mail Sport how the US Open’s revamped idea for the mixed event is ‘a load of rubbish’
This year, the mixed doubles event will be played in the week before the main fortnight, will see four-game sets, and will have a smaller pool of pairs
The doubles game has not had any household names since Rob and Mike Bryan and could do with refreshing, but is this really the way to do it?
The 28-year-old has had some time to reflect on the news by the time we speak, and had listened to the US Open’s player relations chief, Eric Butorac, and tournament director Stacey Allaster championing their project on Andy Roddick’s podcast Served.
‘They’re all patting themselves on the back and think it’s this brilliant, wonderful, creative idea. It’s a load of rubbish,’ Patten, the reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open champion, told Mail Sport from Doha.
‘Most people could come up with a pretty good tennis event if you get the top 10 on the men’s and women’s side playing mixed. I’m sure Mr Butorac will be getting a nice bonus when, inevitably, this is a great success.
‘But they are calling it a Grand Slam and that is really disappointing. The Grand Slams are supposed to be the pinnacle of our sport that all the best players in the world strive to compete in and I don’t think mixed doubles is any different.
‘This new event is fast-four format, limited entry – the whole thing screams exhibition.
‘It’s a big discourtesy to the players who have won it previously; it discredits their achievement.’
One such player is Patten’s Finnish partner Harri Heliovaara, who won the title in 2023. ‘It meant the absolute world to him,’ says Patten, who was himself due to compete in New York with fellow Brit Olivia Nicholls: ‘We were really looking forward to representing our country. It’s a kick in the teeth.’
Patten articulates the disillusionment amongst his peers. He reveals there was zero consultation with the doubles community before this event was unveiled and – to them – that feels like a worrying precedent.
Patten says the change ‘screams exhibition’ and urges tennis chiefs to give doubles stars more chances to market themselves
Doubles is the most common format at amateur level but is at a fork in the road professionally
The doubles community was not consulted before the US Open’s new event was unveiled
It is cruelly ironic that when tennis makes a move to properly profile doubles – with prime time TV exposure on the biggest courts and a $1million first prize – doubles players themselves are forcibly excluded.
The timing of the event before the main fortnight kicks off and the shortened format are clever ways to entice singles stars – but this could still have been done while maintaining a 32-team draw and allowing doubles players to compete, too.
Regardless of one’s view of this experiment, any innovation is welcome in a format which has been criminally underused at a time when other sports are contorting themselves to finagle ways for men and women to compete together.
At Tokyo 2020 mixed relay was added to the Olympics for the first time and last year in America basketball players Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu contested a wildly successful male v female three-point shooting competition.
Tennis doesn’t need to warp its rules to accommodate such contests; men and women have been playing together since 19th century garden parties. But as a sport it has done a terrible job of marketing and platforming mixed – and doubles in general.
Since the retirement of the Bryan brothers – American twins who dominated the game – no doubles player has been able to establish themselves as anything close to a household name.
Patten argues they have not been allowed the opportunity to do so.
‘I would love to see a bit more storytelling on the double side,’ says the world No3. ‘I really think fans can have more of a connection with doubles players. We’re always desperate to get involved (in promotion for events) we just don’t always get picked.
It is often treated as the poor relation to the singles, with Emma Raducanu pulling out of her mixed doubles adventure with Andy Murray last summer to save her wrist for the singles
‘We can dedicate a lot more time than the singles guys, whether it be pro-ams or hitting with kids or just interacting with fans more.’
It all feels like a fork in the road for a format which represents the vast majority of amateur play at club level, certainly in this country. If the US Open’s mixed jamboree is a success, will other events look to lock out the doubles players – not just mixed but men’s and women’s – in favour of a hit-and-giggle with a handful of big names?
If that is the case, then the late blooming career of Colchester’s Patten may be doomed to wither on the vine.
Hollywood-worthy Schwartzman bows out
Last week saw the end of a career which was worthy of a Hollywood movie. Diego Schwartzman: a Short Story begins aboard a train carrying his Polish-Jewish great grandfather to a Nazi concentration camp.
One carriage breaks away from the train and Diego’s ancestor runs for his life – and keeps running until he reaches Argentina.
The Schwartzman family grow prosperous but lose everything in Argentina’s great depression.
They scrape enough together to fund a tennis career for little Diego (named after Maradona), who plays at a club for Jewish-Argentines founded in the early 20th century when Jews were not welcome elsewhere.
Diego Schwartzman’s career and backstory is worthy of a Hollywood movie – he is a giant of a man
Holger Rune (pictured) revealed Schwartzman once helped pay for his dinner when he didn’t have enough money in his early days
When you consider all that, it is no surprise Schwartzman was at peace with his lot of being 5ft 7in in a sport reserved for giants, becoming the shortest man since Harold Solomon (coincidently also Jewish) in 1980 to make a Grand Slam semi-final.
Holger Rune shared a story from his first days on tour when he did not have enough money to pay for his dinner and Schwartzman helped him out. He may be affectionately known as El Peque (Shorty), but Diego Schwartzman is a giant of a man.
Argentina Open was fantastic
The retirement of Schwartzman and the eventual triumph of Joao Fonseca (more on him below) were the bookends of a quite brilliant Argentina Open last week.
It was good timing, as this portion of the tour is being increasingly colonised by middle eastern events.
In contrast to the soulless arenas of Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai, the Horacio Billoch Caride Stadium was a cauldron of emotion.
Hopefully the tournament’s record attendance will stave off plans to switch the Latin American ‘Golden Swing’ from clay to hard courts.
With hard-court tennis increasingly becoming a ball-bashing exercise, we need more tournaments on clay and grass – surfaces which force players to improvise and adapt – rather than fewer.
The Argentina Open was brilliant and Joao Fonseca, 18, shone as he won his first ATP title
One to watch: Joao Fonseca
Could it be anyone else? The baby-faced 18-year-old blasted his way to the title in Buenos Aires to reinforce his status as the most exciting talent in the game.
He took down four Argentines on the way to his first ATP title, including saving two match points in the quarter-finals against Mariano Navone.
Fonseca has a forehand that connects like the hammer of Thor and that intangible magnetism which draws fans in.
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are so far ahead of their peers that it was always going to take the rising of a new force to interrupt their dominance.
Well it appears that force has awoken and Andy Murray summed up the feelings of the tennis world when he tweeted: ‘Can’t wait for the first Fonseca vs Alcaraz match.’
