US Open forges new world with revamped mixed doubles tournament

Adding a new page to its history as an innovator in everything from introducing the tiebreaker at the majors to making night tennis a full-fledged part of its programming mix, the US Open this year has taken a completely new approach to the mixed doubles event.

PREVIEW: US Open mixed doubles field becomes battle royale in Flushing Meadows

Farewell, 32-team draw, largely filled with players who mostly make their living playing men’s and women’s doubles. Hello, 16-team draw, the lion’s share of entrants a familiar singles competitor. Bid adieu also to two-out-of-three set matches. Enter two sets played with no-ad scoring, first team to four games. In lieu of a third set, there will be a ten-point tiebreaker. The US Open mixed doubles tournament will also take place only over two days, on Tuesday, August 19 and Wednesday, August 20, during what’s called “Fan Week.”

Yes, the team who wins this event will earn a major title. Nearly 50 percent of my mind is disturbed by the notion that two people competing in this format will join a pantheon of past US Open mixed champions that includes such Hall of Famers as the Bryan brothers, Martina Hingis, Leander Paes, Martina Navratilova, Mark Woodforde, Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, Margaret Court, Frew McMillan, Jana Novotna, Helena Sukova, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, and Owen Davidson. Might the US Open organizers instead have staged this as an exhibition? If certainly less credible, would an exhibition have been any less engaging?

Then again, in what I’ll call the post-Bryan Brothers Era, what are we to make of professional doubles? To watch doubles these days can be enjoyable, particularly when a duo’s thundering groundstrokes are accompanied by nimbleness in the front part of the court.

But to know doubles, or at least try to know doubles, is an exercise in frustration or even futility. Its excellent athletes are highly interchangeable, skilled specialists who at most tournaments play two sets with no-ad scoring and finish with a ten-point tiebreaker. That’s less tennis than I’ve usually played in USTA league matches. From there, a contemporary doubles player vanishes into the electronic ether of point races and rankings.

Given that workload, might the doubles players use that significant quantity of off-hours to partner with their handlers and tour staff to better promote themselves? What about names on their shirts? Compelling web content? On-site clinics and autograph sessions? Instead, alas, sadly, or perhaps even opportunistically, most contemporary doubles players are hardly visible to fans who might greatly appreciate these skilled athletes if they had the chance to know who they were.

Call this year’s experiment an intriguing debut of theoretically engaging duo acts. Over the next two to three years, tweaks and turnouts will help determine if the US Open’s new approach to mixed doubles is not merely an incidental cameo, but a full-fledged cast member.

More bluntly, today’s doubles players have ushered themselves into near anonymity. So instead, here we are, with the US Open figuring it’s worth trying something completely different in the mixed, which after all is scarcely an overplayed discipline. Hence, the other half of my mind says, why not give it a shot?

Back to 1970, when the US Open was the first major to deploy the tiebreaker, the tournament has a long history of innovation. This year marks the golden anniversary of two such moments. First came the shift from grass to clay, an intriguing three-year intermission between old school grass and contemporary hardcourts that ended when the tournament relocated to Flushing Meadows in 1978.

The second innovation of 1975 was the start of night play. Even though the US Open was then played at the cozy West Side Tennis Club, from the start, those early flickers of nocturnal activity —mostly then, a few lively clay court matches – gave hope that night tennis indeed could bring a special kind of New York City energy to the tournament.

Once Flushing Meadows and Louis Armstrong Stadium entered the picture, the die was cast, night tennis soon enough becoming a specific plot element in the way only New York can deliver. To a great degree, night tennis has become the tournament’s main attraction. Mixed doubles? Call this year’s experiment an intriguing debut of theoretically engaging duo acts. Over the next two to three years, tweaks and turnouts will help determine if the US Open’s new approach to mixed doubles is not merely an incidental cameo, but a full-fledged cast member.