NEW YORK – After five and a half hours of opening acts, the main event of the first day of the US Open began when Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz took the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium. There was just a little noise. The kind of noise that only rises in stadiums for generational talents who happen to have been away from a sport longer than any of that sport’s fans would have liked: four months for Alcaraz and the better part of four years for Williams. The applause echoed around the steel and concrete of tennis’ largest stadium in a way that became felt rather than heard. One point into their match, Williams stepped up to a floating return and ripped it across the court, letting out one of those patented grunts, and they were gone. Williams, 44, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion and 16-time Grand Slam doubles champion, the GOAT of women’s tennis for many, is enjoying one of those last rides into the sunset that few expected, especially her. How do fans feel about Serena Williams returning? Lauren Morales-Jones and Johnny SweetHow long will it last? Days? In the next season? No one really knows, although she swears it won’t be long. Williams did not take a wild card in the singles competition, leaving the women’s doubles with her sister Venus, with whom she won 14 of those Grand Slam titles in doubles, as her only other event in this tournament. Alcaraz, 23, is still in the early stages of what should be an epic career, although a worrying wrist injury has him and much of the sport concerned about his immediate future. He already has seven Grand Slam singles titles, including one of each, being the youngest man to do so. What do you think of a magnetic couple? And those screams. What a moment. It got better. Trailing 3-1 in the first set against Erin Routliffe and Lloyd Glasspool, two experienced doubles players, Alcaraz and Williams came alive to win eight of the next nine games. The two all-time greats shed their rust and rode sheer talent and instinct to overcome and dominate opponents who know the geometry of the doubles court much better than Alcaraz and Williams, but didn’t know what had hit them. Routliffe perhaps knew this too well, having faced Williams three times this summer, with a win to prove it. There was Alcaraz doing those crazy Alcaraz things: the miraculous touch volleys, the impossible shots, the smile lighting up the stadium. There was Williams, firing aces and finding angles that seemed impossible until the ball left its strings and curved exactly where she asked it to go. “She made it very easy for me,” Alcaraz said on court after a 5-3, 4-1 victory in this four-fast format, the second edition of the US Open mixed doubles that was redesigned to favor singles star power (and to provide a much bigger check for the winners) in 2025. They lost their second match. to the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, mixed doubles champions Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli, but it was mostly about the show. Williams was equally effusive. “This is a big advantage,” he said. “Playing with Carlos, honestly, is great.” Gaël Monfils and Elina Svitolina brought more joy to the US Open crowd during Fan Week. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images) There were many things Alcaraz still couldn’t do as he returns from his right wrist injury. The speed of his serve was well below its peak. It looked rusty. What her time on court with Williams said about her quest to defend her singles title likely won’t be readable until she plays her first-round match next week. Elsewhere, it was another proof of concept for the US Open’s choice to remake a competition and, in doing so, alienate players who have dedicated their careers to it. of individual names in bold to win the title and take home $1 million. This year, after a qualifying event brought even more glamorous names to the doubles competition, including world numbers ones Kateřina Siniaková and Henry Patten, that outcome seemed likely again. It turned out not so much. The semi-finals could have all been doubles specialists. In the end, they were all single. Siniaková and Patten defeated Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic with ease after a weak first set, but husband-and-wife duo Gaël Monfils and Elina Svitolina edged them in a decisive 10-point tiebreaker. Routliffe and Glasspool fell to Alcaraz and Williams. And Errani and Vavassori lost their own tiebreaker to Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev. On Wednesday, it will be Svitolina and Monfils against Bencic and Cobolli. Andreeva and Rublev will play against Jakub Menšík and Karolína Muchová, who could be the tennis favorites, with Menšík’s lethal serve and Muchová’s gossamer touch. But because of the vibrations, on a day full of them? Monfils and Svitolina, who lit up the crowd from start to finish, are undefeated in the last four. “We understand each other by looking at each other,” said Svitolina. “We can find the right words for each other.” Mixed doubles can be a strange discipline, it’s all about speed, angles and surprise. But vibrations, of all kinds, can also be of great help.
