In the column last week, I mentioned the renewed mixed event of the US Open that has fallen into the small double world like a brick in a pond. Despite the discontent waves and recognizing the blatant lack of respect for doubles players, I said that if the stars of the best singles could be convinced to compete, “the end would justify the media.”
After talking to the double player NO1 of Great Britain, Henry Patten, during the weekend, I am convinced that he was wrong: the idea has merit, but the ax of the format and the margin of traditional exponents are unnecessary.
To briefly recapitulate: in 2025, the Mixed Doubles event in the Grand Grand Slam of the season will be presented the week before the traditional fortnight, the so -called 'Fans Week'. The draw has been cut from 32 pairs to 16 and the sets will first be played to four games, instead of six. And here is the kicker: the qualification will be based on singles, not double, classifications, with eight wild cards.
The idea is that by cutting the duration of the event and keeping it in zero week, the most important names of the game will be delighted to compete before the serious business begins. It will be screened during ESTELLAR on ESPN.
It is essentially an improved version of the exhibition event of the mixed madness of the US Open, which was a great success last year, with four peers playing a winner, which conveniently was conveniently was the Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa Stefanos tennis couple.
Everything sounds like a good fun, but Patten said that the US Open could have expanded in an already successful formula without cannibalizing the mixed double doubles competition.
Reigning Wimbledon and the double champion of the Australian Open Henry Patten (left) tells Mail Sport how the renewed idea of the US Open for the mixed event is 'a garbage load'
This year, the mixed doubles event will be played in the week before the main fortnight, see four games and will have a smaller peer group
The doubles game has not had any family name from Rob and Mike Bryan and could make an update, but is this the way to do it?
The 28 -year -old has had time to reflect on the news when we talked, and had heard the head of relations with the US Open players, Eric Botorac, and the director of the Stacey Allaaster tournament defending his project on the Andy Roddick podcast.
'Everyone is stroking in the back and they think that it is this brilliant, wonderful and creative idea. It's a lot of garbage ', Patten, the current Wimbledon champion and Australia's open, told Mail Sport from Doha.
'Most people could find a quite good tennis event if you get the top 10 on the male and female side playing mixed. I am sure that Mr. BuTorac will get a good advantage when, inevitably, this is a great success.
'But they call it Grand Slam and that is really disappointing. It is assumed that the Grand Slams are the pinnacle of our sport in which all the best players in the world strive to compete and I do not think the mixed doubles are different.
'This new event is rapid format, limited entrance: the whole matter shouts exhibition.
'It is a great discussion for players who have previously won it; discredit your achievement.
One of those players is Patten's Finnish companion, Harri Heliovaara, who won the title in 2023. “The absolute world meant for him,” says Patten, who was himself to compete in New York with his British partner Olivia Nicholls: “Really We were looking to advance to our country.
Patten articulates disappointment among their peers. He reveals that there was a zero consultation with the double community before this event was revealed and, for them, that it feels like a worrying precedent.
Patten says that the change 'shouting' and urges the tennis chiefs to give the double opportunities stars more opportunities to commercialize themselves
The doubles are the most common format at the level of amateur, but is in a bifurcation on the road professionally
The double community was not consulted before the new US Open event was revealed
It is cruelly ironic that when tennis makes a movement towards the appropriate double profiles, with exposure to TV during stellar schedule in the largest courts and a first prize of $ 1 million, the doubles themselves are excluded by force.
The moment of the event before the game of fifteen days and the shortened format are intelligent ways of attracting individual stars, but this could still have been done while maintaining a draw of 32 teams and allowing double players to also compete.
Regardless of the vision of this experiment, any innovation is welcome in a format that has been criminally underutilized at a time when other sports are retiring to fine forms so that men and women compete together.
In Tokyo 2020, the Olympic Games for the first time and last year in the basketball players of America, Steph Curry and Sabrina ionscu were added mixed relief, challenged a three -point shooting competition in V very successful V V
Tennis does not need to deform its rules to accommodate such competitions; Men and women have been playing together since parties in the 19th century garden. But as sport he has done a terrible work of marketing and mixed platforms, and doubles in general.
From the retirement of the Bryan brothers, the American twins who dominated the game, no double player has been able to establish himself as anything close to a family name.
Patten argues that they have not been allowed the opportunity to do so.
“I would love to see a little more narration on the double side,” says the world of the world. 'I really believe that fans can have more connection with double players. We are always desperate to get involved (in promotion of events) simply do not always choose us.
It is often treated as the bad relationship with the singles, with Emma Raducanu taking out his mixed doubles adventure with Andy Murray last summer to save his wrist for the singles
“We can dedicate much more time than single, either Pro -am or hit with children or simply interact with fans.”
Everything feels like a bifurcation on the way for a format that represents the vast majority of the amateur game at the club level, certainly in this country. If the mixed Jamboree of the US Open is a success, will other events seek to block double, not only mixed players but also men and women, in favor of a blow and laugh with a handful of big names?
If that is the case, then the Flor de Patten de Colchester can be sentenced to wilt in the vine.
Schwartzman worthy of Hollywood is presented
Last week he saw the end of a race that was worthy of a Hollywood movie. Diego Schwartzman: A short story It begins aboard a train that carries its Polish great grandfather-Jew to a Nazi concentration camp.
A car moves away from the train and Diego's ancestor runs for his life, and continues to run until he arrives in Argentina.
The Schwartzman family becomes prosperous but loses everything in Argentina's great depression.
Raspe enough to finance a tennis race for Little Diego (called Maradona), who plays in a club for Jewish Argentines founded in the early twentieth century, when the Jews were not welcome elsewhere.
Diego Schwartzman's career and background are worthy of a Hollywood movie: he is a man giant
Holger Rune (in the photo) revealed that Schwartzman once helped pay his dinner when he didn't have enough money in his early days
When he considers all that, it is not surprising that Schwartzman was in peace with his lot of 5 feet and 7 inches in a sport reserved for the giants, becoming the shortest man from Harold Solomon (coincidentally also Jewish) in 1980 to make a semifinal of Grand Slam.
Holger Rune shared a story of his first days on the tour when he didn't have enough money to pay his dinner and Schwartzman helped him. It can be affectionately known as the PQUE (Shorty), but Diego Schwartzman is a giant man.
Argentina Open was fantastic
The retirement of Schwartzman and the eventual triumph of Joao Fonseca (more about him below) were the subjects of an open Argentina's open last week.
It was a good moment, since this part of the tour is being colonized more and more by the events of the Middle East.
In contrast to the soulless sands of Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai, the Horacioch Caride stadium was a cauldron of emotion.
Hopefully record assistance of the tournament will avoid plans to change the 'golden judged clay swing to hard courts.
Since the tennis of the hard court is becoming more and more an exercise of ball blows, we need more tournaments about clay and grass, surfaces that force players to improvise and adapt, instead of less.
Argentina Open was brilliant and Joao Fonseca, 18, shone when he won his first ATP title
One to see: Joao Fonseca
Could someone else be? The 18 -year -old made his way to the title in Buenos Aires to reinforce his status as the most exciting talent of the game.
Four Argentines melted on the way to his first ATP title, including the savings of two points of the match in the quarterfinals against Mariano Navone.
Fonseca has a right -wing blow that connects like Thor's hammer and that intangible magnetism that attracts fans.
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are so ahead of their peers that they were always going to increase a new force to interrupt their domain.
Well, it seems that Force has woken up and Andy Murray summed up the feelings of the world of tennis when he tweeted: “I can't wait for the first game Fonseca vs Alcaraz.”