Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz Win Debut, Lose Quarterfinal in US Open Mixed Doubles

Serena Williams walked back onto Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday, August 25, for the first time since 2022. She didn't come to play singles. She came to play mixed doubles with Carlos Alcaraz, and the crowd of roughly 15,000 didn't care that it wasn't the main draw.

Williams, 44, has 23 Grand Slam singles titles. Alcaraz, 23, has seven, including the men's title he's currently defending. Neither had played a competitive match in months. Alcaraz tore up his wrist and hadn't played since April 14. Williams hadn't competed at her home slam since she said she was "evolving away" from tennis in 2022.

They won their first match together, 5-3, 4-1, over Erin Routliffe of New Zealand and Lloyd Glasspool of Great Britain, according to the BBC. Alcaraz double-faulted on the very first point. "I think everyone could see I was really nervous," he said afterward, according to the BBC and India Today. "I was out for almost five months and I almost forgot how it feels stepping out on the court once again."

Williams carried him early. The New York Times described her rocketing a 120-mph ace and finding angles that "looked impossible until the ball left her strings." Al Jazeera reported the same ace drew audible gasps from the crowd. Down 3-1 in the first set, the pair reeled off eight of the next nine games to close it out.

The run ended the same day. Fourth seeds Belinda Bencic of Switzerland and Flavio Cobolli of Italy beat Williams and Alcaraz 5-4(4), 4-1 in the quarterfinals, according to NBC Sports (via the Associated Press) and the Independent's live coverage. Cobolli had called them "the queen of tennis and the king of now" before the match, per NBC Sports. Afterward he admitted the moment got to him: "Playing Serena and Carlos on Arthur Ashe is not easy. I was tired before the match, I'm tired now," he told Al Jazeera.

Bencic said Williams tried needling her mid-match by claiming she spoke Italian better than Bencic. "It was surreal to play against Carlos," Bencic told the AP. "Sometimes I was just standing at the volley or the return, and I was like, 'How did I end up on this court?'"

A format built for exactly this moment

The US Open overhauled mixed doubles in 2025, moving it to a standalone slot before the main singles draw and leaning hard on singles stars rather than career doubles specialists. The redesign also pays out bigger prize money, with this year's champions set to collect $1 million, according to NBC Sports.

The move has real critics. Established doubles players have argued the format sidelines specialists who've built careers on that side of the game in favor of singles names cashing in on a side event. The Independent noted that every one of the four pure doubles-specialist pairings lost to a team featuring at least one singles star on the tournament's opening day, including top seeds Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic, who were beaten in the first round by Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten.

Doubles specialists spend years mastering positioning, poaching, and geometry that singles players don't train for, and a format that rewards star power over that skill set can look like it's squeezing out the people who made the discipline what it is. The Independent's live blog and India Today both flagged that criticism directly rather than glossing over it.

But the commercial verdict was hard to argue with. Sellout crowds turned out for the tournament's second year running the new format, and Tuesday's session delivered exactly the spectacle organizers were chasing: two of the sport's biggest names, four months and four years removed from competition respectively, playing with what the New York Times called "pure talent and instinct" against players who know the doubles court better than either of them ever will.

What's next

Bencic and Cobolli move on to face Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils in Wednesday's semifinal. The tournament final, unlike the abbreviated fast-four format used through the quarterfinals, will be played as a traditional match with sets to six games.

For Williams, the immediate question is whether she'll play again this fortnight. NBC Sports reported she's entered in women's doubles alongside her sister Venus, with whom she won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles, including two at the US Open. She has no plans to enter singles. Alcaraz, meanwhile, gets valuable match reps back defending his singles title at Flushing Meadows after a five-month layoff, with his wrist wrapped in a sleeve during Tuesday's matches.