The U.S. Open is overhauling its mixed doubles event for 2025, moving it to the week of singles qualifying and staging it over two days on Tuesday Aug. 19 and Wednesday Aug. 20. Sixteen pairs, down from 32 in 2024, will compete in matches played on Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong Stadiums, with the semifinals and final to be broadcast on ESPN2 in prime time. The prize for the winning pair will rise from $200,000 (£161,746) in 2024 to $1,000,000 (£807,506), with the first trophy of the fourth major of the year to be awarded before the singles main draws even begin.

“This is something we’re really excited about,” Lew Sherr, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) chief executive, said in a video interview Monday.

“I’m hopeful this becomes a new franchise and tentpole in tennis, not just at the U.S. Open, but elsewhere and throughout the year to attract more folks.”

The scoring system has also been changed to accommodate players potentially competing in four matches over two days. The format up to the final will be best-of-three-set matches with sets played to four games and no-ad scoring, as at the ATP Next Gen Finals. Tiebreaks will be played at 4-4, with a 10-point match tiebreak in lieu of a third set. The final will be a regular three-set match with tiebreaks at 6-6 and a 10-point tiebreak again replacing the third set. All of the matches will be ticketed, but ground entry to the qualifying week will remain free.

Eight pairs will earn direct entry based on their combined singles ranking, with eight teams receiving wildcards from the U.S. Open’s wildcard committee. This change is the most disruptive to doubles as a discipline, effectively shutting out doubles specialists from one of their four majors. The singles ranking entry is an attempt to attract the sport’s most famous names, in a deliberate follow from the so-called ‘Mixed Madness’ exhibition event that the USTA says partly inspired the format change. Paula Badosa and Stefanos Tsitsipas won that event, which also featured Grand Slam champions Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka and American men’s singles world No. 14 Ben Shelton.

The tournament is yet to confirm its full roster of players, but 2024 U.S. Open singles finalists Jessica Pegula and Taylor Fritz are expected to compete for 2025. Pegula said she is “excited for the opportunity to play the 2025 US Open Mixed Doubles Championship,” while Fritz leant his support to the new format in a statement from the USTA.

Some of the most successful doubles players in the world are skeptical of an event that pulls in star power but neglects the best players in the discipline. “If it’s a proper tournament, we should want the best players in the world competing for the title. And at the moment that is not going to happen,” six-time Grand Slam doubles champion and former doubles world No. 1 Rajeev Ram said in a phone interview from California Monday.

Sherr is adamant that the new mixed doubles event will elevate the discipline by attracting new viewers and leaning on the uniqueness of the best men’s and women’s players in the world playing on the same court; existing doubles players fear that their specialism is being turned into a singles sideshow. In a generally conservative sport, this is a genuinely revolutionary move, which exemplifies tennis’ reliance on star power; its tiered systems of fame, power and money and the arms race for primacy among the four Grand Slams.

The germ of this change sprouted six years ago, when arguably the biggest story at Wimbledon was the mixed-doubles linkup between 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams and two-time Wimbledon winner Andy Murray. Earlier that year, Williams and 20-time major champion Roger Federer had played against each other in the Hopman Cup, generating monumental interest that coalesced around a photo of the duo dubbed the “greatest selfie of all time.”

The United Cup, held in Perth and Sydney in December and January, now fulfils the international mixed doubles slot in the tennis calendar and Sherr sees the same potential at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, especially after the success of ‘Mixed Madness’ last year. The ‘Tiebreak Tens,’ an exhibition with a similar but even shorter format played at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., has featured women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka playing with men’s world No. 4 Fritz, five-time major champion Iga Swiatek playing with former world No. 6 Hubert Hurkacz and Australian Open champion Madison Keys playing with world No. 9 Tommy Paul.

“From every reaction that we received, including broadcasters, players, it was unequivocally a success. That emboldened us to go further, which is where we are today,” he said.

“It truly is something unique in sport where you have the best athletes, male and female, competing on the same field of play at the same time against one another. It doesn’t exist in other professional sports.

“This is not an exhibition. This is a Grand Slam championship with significant prize money at stake. And we think it is unique and singular in sports. Our broadcasters all feel the same way.”

The USTA did not confirm whether the 12-year, $2.04 billion agreement that ESPN last year signed for 2026-2037 inclusive incorporates the primetime slots for the semifinals and final of this new event, nor whether an additional rights deal is attached to the 2025 edition. First- and second-round matches will be shown on ESPN2, ESPNEWS and ESPN+, with all matches made available to global broadcasters including Sky and Eurosport, and living on the world feed.

While Sherr stresses that the decision was made in consultation with a number of stakeholders, including players and agents, Ram is not the only doubles star who thinks the discipline is getting a raw deal.

Kristina Mladenovic, also a former doubles world No. 1 and a three-time mixed doubles Grand Slam champion, weighed in after a post on X from Parsa Nemati Feb. 3, which reported the starting day and size of the draw: “Terribly shocking news! Doing that just to sell (sic) more money during first week of the event.”

Marcus Willis, a British doubles player lower down the rankings who reached the Wimbledon mixed quarterfinals last year as a wildcard, could see the benefits for spectators, but said: “I think the doubles guys won’t be over the moon — it’s already a small draw so unless you’re top (right at the top) you have no chance of getting in,” Willis said Monday via a voice note on WhatsApp.

“It’s a change and we don’t like change normally so we’ll have to see how it works. I’m intrigued.”

Ram said he had no issue with the timing of the event, and applauded the USTA’s desire to innovate, but outlined reservations with the entry process.

“I feel like the idea that there is no way to enter a doubles tournament with your doubles ranking excludes the best players in the world in that competition,” he said.

“So ultimately you’re not getting the best product out there possible.

“If you’re going to give a Grand Slam trophy for something, you should want the best players to be playing for it. And you know, regardless of what that is, I think that’s the negative side to it.

“If we’re going to be handing out the trophies saying,  you’re a mixed doubles champion along with all of these other people for the last 100 years or however many years the mixed doubles has existed, then I feel a bit more strongly about it.”

Ram, a four-time men’s doubles (including three U.S. Opens) and three-time mixed doubles Grand Slam champion but now ranked No. 30 aged 40, did not know if he would be given a wildcard. He pointed to the oddity of last year’s champions, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori of Italy, having no means of qualifying besides being at the mercy of the U.S. Open’s wildcard committee. Ram, together with compatriot Austin Krajicek, delivered a signal example of the chasm that can exist between top doubles players and top singles players at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Facing the feted ‘Nadalcaraz’ pairing of Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz, the Americans put on a clinic in angles, court position and geometry to win 6-2, 6-4.

Financially, there aren’t many opportunities for doubles players to make decent money during the year. Last year’s mixed doubles winners and runners-up earned $200,000 (£161,746) and $100,000 (£80,862) respectively. The singles winners and finalists earned $3.6m (£2.9m) and $1.8m (£1.5m) respectively. In the men’s and women’s doubles events, the prize was $750,000 (£606,441) for the champions and $375,000 (£303,221) for the finalists.

The USTA says it is compensating for this by putting the total of last year’s mixed doubles prize pool into the men’s and women’s doubles events, creating a separate prize pool for the mixed event. Sherr said that doubles players would be in consideration for the eight wildcards, but added that “there are likely to be some other singles players that perhaps we think can add to the field.”

“We don’t want any doubles specialist to feel like they’ve lost the financial opportunity because they’re no longer eligible to compete,” Sherr said.

“It’s not that they’re not eligible, but they might be less likely with the shorter field and the singles ranking driving participation. We also think this could be a great boon to doubles in general. Showcasing the format that may stimulate more interest in both the men’s and women’s draw — it won’t be competing in the third week of the tournament either with the men’s and women’s doubles.”

Sherr’s words, and doubles players’ reactions, reveal the tension at the heart of this change. The doubles format may be perceived as lucrative, but the names currently attached to it are not. The USTA did not comment when asked if any of its mixed doubles entrants for 2025 would receive appearance fees.

The growing marginalization of specialist doubles players, who are already shunted onto smaller courts, asked to play shorter formats and paid comparatively meagre sums appears less and less reversible. Katerina Siniakova, the world No. 1 in doubles and No. 53 in singles, put it bluntly last October when she told Tennis Majors: “Really sad about doubles. I can just speak for myself: I think I’ve achieved a lot in doubles, but no one cares.”

In an interview with at the WTA Finals in Riyadh, Siniakova added: “You can feel it’s different because of the promoting and everything. It’s kind of everything about singles players. Even when I’m No. 1 in doubles, still the priority is for the singles players on practice courts and everything.

“It’s kind of funny that if you are No. 1 one in doubles and No. 1 in singles, you have a totally different life.” Siniakova has also experienced first hand the potency of mixed doubles, after she and Tomas Machac became one of the stories of last year’s Olympic Games. That was partly down to the intrigue about their off-court relationship, but also to do with their profiles from being known singles players (both have been ranked inside the world’s top 30). Siniakova’s doubles tour achievements, including 10 Grand Slam titles in women’s with multiple partners, make her one of the best to ever play it.

Mladenovic went as far as to suggest that the proposed changes — which then did not account for the curtailed sets and event length — would make it feel like “an exhibition,” essentially deprofessionalizing doubles on one of its four biggest stages. Many of the biggest new events, from the Laver Cup to exhibitions like the Six Kings Slam, have oriented themselves around star power, lavish prize money or both.

Sherr points to the television coverage, ticketed stadium events and provision of a slot away from what the USTA considers to be the congestion of the main draw as signals not of deprioritization, but of seriousness. Mixed doubles Grand Slam finals — and men’s and women’s doubles finals too — are almost always held as a preview or a postscript to a major singles final, with the latter particularly bad for crowd enthusiasm and size. Playing the events on the biggest stadiums is seen as a signal of importance, but when they are less than half-full, they feel more like vacuums than amphitheatres. There was an uncomfortably small crowd for the recent Australian Open mixed doubles final, despite it being made up of four home players.

The U.S. Open’s push towards being a three-week event meanwhile, already popular with fans for its free entry to singles qualifying, has seen substantial growth: last year, 216,029 fans attended Fan Week, a 37 per cent increase from 2023. Its contention is that paying to see some of the most famous names in tennis play for a Grand Slam trophy on the two biggest show courts is far from a stretch.

“I have no doubt that the other events, not just Grand Slams, but other combined events, should be looking to see how fans react to this event,” Sherr said. He says the new format, timing, television slot and prize money all come from one fundamental question: “Does it create another opportunity to promote the game?”

The best doubles players in the world will have to wait for the wildcards to find out if they’ll be part of that.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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