Serena Williams’ US Open return lasted two matches and one afternoon Tuesday as she and Carlos Alcaraz followed a first-round win with a quarter-final defeat by Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli in the headline attraction of the reimagined mixed doubles competition.
Back inside Arthur Ashe Stadium 1,453 days after the defeat by Ajla Tomljanovic that had appeared to end her career, Williams emerged from the tunnel at half past three to the roars of more than 10,000 spectators. As the 44-year-old American and Alcaraz warmed up in matching purple-and-black Nike kits, public-address announcer Andy Taylor rattled off her accolades one by one to a steadily rising wall of applause. Together they carried 30 grand slam singles titles, a record for a mixed-doubles team at a major.
The tournament was still officially in qualifying week, but the crowds had already swelled to main-draw proportions. The scenes along the boardwalk from the Mets-Willets Point subway station to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center looked like the middle weekend of the tournament. The No 7 train exhaled bursts of fans every few minutes. Vendors rolled enormous coolers through the crowd, selling cold water and canned soda. Jehovah’s Witnesses stood beside literature carts.
Have you heard the good news? The Open was on a week early and Serena was back. Alcaraz, returning from a hiatus of his own due to a wrist injury in the spring, wore a white sleeve and looked rusty from double-faulting on the opening point. The pair dropped three of the first four games, but won eight of the final nine games to beat the British-New Zealand pair of Lloyd Glasspool and Erin Routliffe 5-3, 4-1.
“I never expected to be back on this court,” Williams said after the first match. “I never thought this would happen.”
That momentum did not survive the quick turnaround, with Bencic and Cobolli ending their run 5-4 (4), 4-1. Yet Williams looked anything but a nostalgia act, flying to the net and reading points a stroke ahead. She even served the opening game of the quarter-final ahead of Alcaraz – a rarity in mixed doubles. When it was over after 55 minutes, Williams might have been second-guessing her decision to decline the singles wildcard organizers had kept open for her before giving it to Sofia Kenin.
This was the bargain offered by the revamped mixed doubles championship: unprecedented star wattage, abbreviated matches and abrupt endings. Last year’s overhaul moved mixed doubles to a standalone slot before singles, cut the field to 16 and raised the top prize to $1m, favoring singles stars over the objections of doubles specialists. Early rounds use four-game sets, no-ad scoring and a 10-point decider. Only Wednesday’s final returns to six-game sets.
Williams and Alcaraz were not the only star tandem caught by the format’s trapdoor. Top seeds Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka lost in the opening match on Ashe to Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten, who then fell to the married couple Elina Svitolina and Gaël Monfils.
Svitolina and Monfils edged them 5-4 (6), 4-5 (3), 10-8, then kissed and embraced. Both have gone on deep singles runs here without winning the title. In Monfils’ final grand slam before retirement, they are two victories from a trophy and a seven-figure windfall when the event concludes on Wednesday night.
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“Happy wife, happy life,” Monfils said.
The revamped event promised maximum attention for minimum wear and Williams delivered both. Her stay was fleeting, but long enough to make the US Open feel as though it had truly arrived ahead of schedule.
