US Open's new mixed doubles format draws criticism as being more of an exhibition than a Grand Slam

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US Open's new mixed doubles format draws criticism as being more of an exhibition than a Grand Slam

2025-02-12 07:31 Last Updated At：07:41

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Open's plan to make its mixed doubles championship a smaller, shorter event aimed at persuading top singles players to compete was criticized Tuesday by doubles specialists who figure to get shut out of the new format.

The 16-team competition will award half the spots to teams based on the players' singles rankings, which means players such as 2024 champions Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori likely are hoping for one of the eight wild cards as their only hope to win the $1 million prize.

The Italian duo wrote in an Instagram post that the decision to replace the traditional tournament with a “pseudo-exhibition focused only on entertainment and show” was a “profound injustice” that disrespected “an entire category of players.”

“We don’t know at the moment if we’ll have the chance to defend our title, but we hope this will remain an isolated case and this type of policy will not be considered again in the future.” they wrote.

The plan announced Tuesday calls for mixed doubles to be contested on Aug. 19 and 20, during the week when the qualifying rounds for men’s and women’s singles are being held. Main draw play in singles begins on Aug. 24, ensuring that the sport’s biggest stars, many of whom have long passed on doubles to keep themselves fresh for singles, wouldn't have an overcrowded schedule.

Lew Sherr, executive director and CEO of the U.S. Tennis Association, told The Associated Press that the goal was to increase tennis' fan base.

“But the way to do that is to have the biggest names in the sport participating in doubles, and to showcase them teaming up and playing in a different format, we think is exciting," Sherr said.

The early round matches will be best-of-three sets played to just four games, with a deciding point played at deuce. Tiebreakers would be at 4-all — rather than 6-6 in a regular match — and a 10-point match tiebreaker would be played if the teams split sets, rather than a third set.

Only the final will closely resemble a Grand Slam match, a best-of-three sets played to six games with no-ad scoring, tiebreakers at 6-all and a 10-point match tiebreaker.

“Sets to 4 games in a Grand Slam? 16 teams with 8 based on singles rankings and 8 wildcards. I’m sorry, but the US Open now will not produce a bona fide mixed doubles winner. Devalued from a Grand Slam title to an exo,” Paul McNamee, a five-time Grand Slam doubles champion and the former Australian Open tournament director, wrote on X.

Sherr said the USTA had discussed a format change in previous years but the idea truly picked up steam after last year, when a “Mixed Madness” event during the qualifying week drew singles superstars such as Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka, Nick Kyrgios and Ben Shelton, and was won by Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa.

“We’ve known and we’ve had conversations over the years, like, why don’t they participate and we understand the scheduling challenges,” Sherr said. “I think last year’s task with that mixed madness event really informed our thinking, that if we could unlock that week and free up the top singles players to participate, because it didn’t compromise their fitness or their health going into the singles, there was a huge opportunity to attract them and that’s what we saw.”

There was a $500,000 prize for that event, which had just four teams. By doubling the winner's prize money and expanding the field, Sherr believes it will create a competition worthy of a Grand Slam title.

“The athletes played hard,” Sherr said. “It was not an exhibition, it was not a hit-and giggle, no kids got brought onto the court. It was a competition and that to me was the test. Would the athletes compete, and the answer to that was yes. Now we have an opportunity for a legitimate world championship, a Grand Slam championship, and we think the stakes only go up by making it the actual event.”

Sherr declined to name any players who had committed but said enough have expressed interest that some teams may be announced in the coming weeks, long before the field is set in the summer.

The tournament will be played in Arthur Ashe and Louis Armstrong, the two biggest stadiums, and be televised by ESPN in prime time, exposure that is rarely given to doubles. But it will squeeze out doubles players who count on Grand Slam paychecks and now lose access to one of them.

“No communication with the players, no thought behind what it means to some peoples careers, no respect to the history and traditions. Sad to see,” Jan Zielinski, who won two Grand Slam mixed doubles titles last year, wrote on X, ending his post with a circus tent emoji.

Sherr said the prize money that was allocated to the 32-team mixed doubles tournament at last year's U.S. Open would be redirected toward men's and women's doubles.

“Yes, there’s some that will be disappointed that they won’t have the opportunity to compete in this event,” Sherr said. “On the other side, we know that there’s a huge opportunity to create more interest globally in doubles and there may be a cascading effect here, that the mixed creates a bigger spotlight on the men’s and women’s doubles when we get into that portion of the tournament.

"We’ll have to see how that plays out, but we do know that our mixed competition historically has been competing with the men’s and women’s singles, and so the fields have suffered and the attention has suffered. This is a chance to give it a massive spotlight over two nights.”

AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis

Things to know about the retrial of Karen Read in the killing of her police officer boyfriend

2025-05-03 04:37 Last Updated At：04:42

The defense in Karen Read's second murder case repeatedly sparred Friday with a key witness who was with Read the morning she found her Boston police officer boyfriend dead in the snow, hoping to undermine her testimony.

Defense attorney Alan Jackson tried to suggest that past inconsistencies showed Jennifer McCabe’s testimony couldn’t be trusted. He also suggested that she and several other witnesses coordinated their version of events around the death of John O'Keefe.

Prosecutors say Read, 45, backed her SUV into O’Keefe after dropping him off at a party hosted by a fellow officer in January 2022 and left him to die in the snow. Defense attorneys say she was a victim of a conspiracy involving the police and have suggested he was killed by someone inside the home.

A mistrial was declared last year after jurors said they were at an impasse. Read's second trial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene, began April 22 and has thus far looked similar to the first.

On Friday, Jackson tried to convince the jury that McCabe's testimony has shifted over time or she left out key details about the events before and after O'Keefe's death.

McCabe, he said, never mentioned that she called her sister just before O'Keefe was found in the snow — something she denied. The two also sparred over what she told former State Trooper Michael Proctor, the lead investigator on the case, about a broken taillight on Read's vehicle. Jackson said she told Proctor that it was cracked, while McCabe testified that she "believed I said it was broken and cracked and it was missing pieces.”

After Jackson challenged McCabe about the route she took to the house, McCabe sounded exasperated.

“I was in shock,” she told the court. “So a lot of things from that day are foggy. Certain things, certain details I may have forgotten.”

Jackson responded that “all of your testimony over the last several days is based on that memory that you just described to these jurors, correct?

McCabe then shot back that “there are certain things I’ll never forget.”

Jackson accused McCabe and other witnesses of coordinating their versions of events in the hours and days after O'Keefe died. He brought up a group chat that included McCabe and several others in which they talked about the case and acknowledged listening to a police interview of another witness, Kerry Roberts, who was also with Read and McCabe that morning.

“In the text that we just saw, you were colluding with other witnesses, percipient witnesses in this case through those text messages, were you not?” Jackson asked, prompting McCabe to deny it.

He pressed further, suggesting she listened to Roberts' interview to help shape her own version of events, which McCabe again denied.

The two also sparred over a Google search — “hos (sic) long to die in cold” — by McCabe related to concerns that O"Keefe was suffering from hyperthermia. She pushed back on a suggestion it was done much earlier in the morning of O'Keefe's death. She also insisted it was done at Read's request soon after they arrived on the scene, despite no other witnesses recounting that.

“I stand by that 110%,” she said, when Jackson challenged her account.

Jackson also questioned McCabe's actions once she arrived on the scene, arguing that she should have done more to help O'Keefe. He suggested that she knew the homeowner, Brian Albert, a friend who had been a Boston police officer, could have provided blankets and was trained to provide life-saving treatment.

“You could have walked 25 feet to the front door, walked in the house and screamed for Brian Albert to help you in those precious minutes,” Jackson asked.

McCabe said her focus was exclusively on O'Keefe at the time.

“That would have taken me away from helping John, getting Kerry blankets, giving him compressions,” she said.

During her second day of testimony Wednesday, McCabe recalled a chaotic scene when they reached the house where O'Keefe, 46, was later found lying in the snow. She called 911 to report a body while Read and another friend Roberts tried to warm O'Keefe up and perform CPR.

Read, she said, was running around and screaming so much that police suggested she sit in a police cruiser. The three sat together praying, and McCabe remember Read wondering aloud who would take care of O'Keefe's two adopted children. As O'Keefe's body was moved to an ambulance, Read screamed for Roberts to go check on him and wondered if he was dead.

Then, McCabe testified that she was standing next to a police officer and a paramedic as Read told them “I hit him” three times — corroborating earlier testimony from paramedics.

But Jackson challenged McCabe, questioning why those comments couldn't be found in earlier police reports or in the 227 pages of her grand jury testimony. Instead, Jackson said she told the grand jury that she recalled Read saying to a paramedic, “Did I hit him? Could I have hit him? Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead?”

“In point of fact, in your entire grand jury testimony, you never said my client said the words I hit him.” he said.

McCabe insisted she had told police what Read said — even if it wasn't in the reports — and that it wasn't in the grand jury testimony because she wasn't asked specifically about it. As for the comments in her grand jury testimony, she said there were many conversations with paramedics and police at the scene.

“'I hit him. I hit him. I hit him,' is just as fresh today as it was three years ago,” she said.

US Open's new mixed doubles format draws criticism as being more of an exhibition than a Grand Slam

Sport

US Open's new mixed doubles format draws criticism as being more of an exhibition than a Grand Slam

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