Two years ago, Taylor Townsend and a largely unknown 19-year-old raced all the way into the US Open mixed doubles semifinals.
That teenager was Ben Shelton and today he’s a Top 10 player on the ATP Tour. Townsend, meanwhile, has risen to the No. 1 doubles player in the PIF WTA Rankings. When the US Open announced a ground-breaking makeover for the standard Grand Slam mixed doubles tournament, Shelton jumped on the phone.
“So are we doing this or what?” Shelton asked Townsend.
“Yeah,” she answered, “I was just waiting on your call.”
Recently in Washington, D.C., Shelton elaborated.
“She’s the best mixed doubles player in the world, hands down,” he said. “So if I was going to play, I wasn’t going to play at all unless I could play with her. My dad [his coach Bryan] was, like, ‘There’s no point in playing if you’re not trying to win it.’
“And she’s who I think I have a chance to win it with.”
Both of them fielded mixed doubles questions in the nation’s capital, where some reporters were calling them “overdogs.”
“I’m excited to see how things go, because the field is amazing,” Townsend said. “The players are spectacular. And I think it’s really cool to be able to also do this during Fan Week and qualies week where then you’re bringing an influx of fans, people, celebrities, all of these different types, these energies that are coming to the tournament.”
In an effort to draw more elite singles players, the United States Tennis Association seriously tweaked the format, making it a two-day event a week ahead of the main singles draws. The 16 teams begin play at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center on Tuesday, Aug. 19, at 11 a.m. The 7 p.m. Wednesday evening session in Arthur Ashe Stadium will feature the semifinals and final.
Incentives for singles players: Best-of-three-set matches, with short sets of up to four games, with no-ad scoring. If each team wins four games in a set, they’ll play a tiebreak. If the teams split sets, a 10-point match tiebreak will be played in lieu of a third set.
The final will be a best-of-three-set match, with sets maxing out at six games. If it goes the distance, the two teams will play a deciding set.
Eight of the teams were determined by direct entry based on their combined singles ranking. The other eight were granted wild cards.
Feast your eyes on these dream teams:
Direct entries (8): No. 1 seeds Jessica Pegula and Jack Draper, No. 2 Elena Rybakina and Taylor Fritz, No. 3 Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud and No. 4 Amanda Anisimova and Holger Rune. Other teams include Belinda Bencic and Alexander Zverev, Mirra Andreeva and Daniil Medvedev, Karolina Muchova and Andrey Rublev and Madison Keys and Frances Tiafoe.
Wild cards (8): Katerina Siniakova and Jannik Sinner, Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz, Olga Danilovic and Novak Djokovic, Taylor Townsend and Ben Shelton, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, Venus Williams and Reilly Opelka, Naomi Osaka and Gael Monfils and Caty McNally and Lorenzo Musetti.
Ten of those players are Grand Slam champions, most notably Djokovic (24), Williams (7) — not to mention her 16 major doubles titles — and Swiatek (6). Five WTA Top 10 players are entered, along with six from the ATP Tour. Errani won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics with Jasmine Paolini, Bencic won singles gold in Tokyo and Venus has three golds in doubles.
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka was scheduled to play with Grigor Dimitrov, but a pectoral injury scuttled that pairing. Not that there weren’t other options.
“Well, there is a few guys who are asking,” Sabalenka said, “but no, I don’t think so.”
Emma Navarro was supposed to play with Jannik Sinner, the ATP’s World No. 1, but she opted to play Monterrey instead. At the last minute, Sinner elected to pair with Siniakova, a 10-time major doubles champion, Olympic gold medalist in Tokyo and mixed champion recently at Wimbledon with Sem Verbeek.
Likewise Katie Boulter, who had lobbied with boyfriend Alex de Minaur on social media, is in the Cleveland singles main draw.
How about the pairing of World No. 2 Alcaraz and 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu? Or the tallest team of massive-serving Opelka and Williams? Or the pop of Rybakina and Fritz?
“He has great game, huge shots and serve,” Rybakina said. “I also can serve well, so hopefully, yeah, it’s going to work out.”
There will be drama with three of the four Cincinnati Open finalists — Swiatek, Sinner and Alcaraz — playing on Monday and scheduled to play in New York on Tuesday, starting at 11 a.m.
Townsend said she’s “super-stoked” to be playing with Shelton, but neither partner is ready to say they’re the favorites.
“I don’t know about that — got some big hitters in there,” Shelton said. “We’re both from Atlanta. We have known each other, been friends since I have been out on tour.”
The players understand this is a Grand Slam event and an opportunity to grow the game by attracting casual and even non-tennis fans. They also want to enjoy themselves and entertain the fans.
“We compete hard,” Shelton said. “But we clown out there also. Yeah, it’s a big prize. I forget what the prize money is for the tournament, but I feel like it’s ridiculous.”
The winning team gets $1 million.
“I think that really everyone has to keep an open mind and not judge it,” Townsend said. “Go into looking at it from the lens of tradition and what things have been.
“Because this is nothing like anything that’s been done in the sport before.”
