By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
There was much “bru-ha-ha” over Andy Murray and Emma Raducanu withdrawing from the Wimbledon mixed doubles competition in 2024. Raducanu withdrew from the pairing due to some pain in her wrist, which she wanted to rest in advance of her fourth round singles match with qualifier Lulu Sun, which she ended up losing with some physical distress. The pairing would have been a “box office” smash for fans and TV viewers as the two most popular and successful current British players would compete at The Championships in Murray’s final appearance at the All England Club.
Mixed doubles gets virtually no attention at Grand Slam events and is certainly the discipline that receives the least amount of exposure. It only really gets attention when the biggest stars in the game play or, in this case, pull out due to scheduling and needing rest because they go deep in the singles competition. Pullouts seem to be a lot more common in mixed doubles than anywhere else. Have a look at the 2021 Wimbledon mixed doubles draw that saw five seeded team withdraw and then another six walkovers taking place, including the blockbuster team of Venus Williams and Nick Kyrgios.
Why would Grand Slams care about star players playing Grand Slams? It certainly creates buzz and also provides value to ticket holders who have additional opportunities to watch big-name players? When the matches do get on television, it will probably result in higher TV ratings.
So how do Grand Slams get more star player to play mixed doubles and prevent disappointing withdrawals like Murray and Raducanu?
Start it later.
I think a solution to this issue would be to stage the mixed doubles competition strictly in the second week of Wimbledon and at all Grand Slam tournaments. The draw is only 32 teams so if you play a round a day, it can be finished over five days. If you start the mixed doubles on Monday of the second week, you have two days of buffer in case of rain or scheduling issues with a player who may still be in singles or doubles, although it is rare that a singles player would still be left. In fact, that is increasingly rare. (By the way, did you know that Kevin Curren and Anne Smith played four mixed doubles matches on the final day of the event in 1982 en route to the title because of rain and scheduling issues?)
The sign-in for the mixed doubles can close at 11 am on the middle Sunday of Wimbledon (or other Grand Slams) and the draw and the schedule can be made right after that, with play starting the next day. This would allow for players who lose in the third round of Wimbledon to still enter the mixed doubles tournament or, conversely, players who are through to the fourth round of the tournament can choose not to play because of their expected or unexpected success in the main draw of singles. This would save them the indignity of pulling out of the mixed event. The draw for the mixed doubles was made on the first Thursday of the tournament, which is when the second round of the singles tournament hadn’t yet concluded.
This revised mixed doubles schedule would have 16 first round matches in the 32-team draw, which you could play with four matches each being played over four courts, for example, on that second Monday of the two-week event. The eight round of 16 matches would be played on Tuesday, two matches each on four courts. On Wednesday, the four quarterfinals would be played on two courts and the semifinals on Thursday on one or two courts and the final could be played, after a day off, as part of the Centre Court program on the day of the women’s final. Certainly, during the second week of the tournament there can also be challenges scheduling around the juniors, wheelchair and senior competitions but certainly doable.
Mixed doubles at Grand Slams is not what it used to be when future Hall of Famers would be in many finals and some players even going for “Triple Crowns” of winning the singles, doubles and mixed in the same year (that may never happen again.) Many top players now only play singles and don’t even play doubles, let alone mixed doubles, due to the increased physicality of the sport from the early days in tennis when the top players would often play singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
At Wimbledon in 2024, six of the top 10 ATP ranked doubles players were in the mixed doubles field as well as 13 of top 20, and 20 of top 30. Only four men in the mixed doubles field have ATP singles rankings led by No. 68 Max Purcell and also including No. 206, No. 248, No. 1,528) For the women, five of the top 10 WTA ranked doubles players were in the mixed doubles field as well as 11 of the top 20 and 17 of the top 30. Eighteen players in the field have WTA singles rankings, led by No. 27 Dayana Yastremska.
However, the mixed doubles has sometimes treated fans with some interesting and fan-friendly pairings, such as Murray with Serena Williams at Wimbledon in 2019, Steffi Graf with John McEnroe in 1999 and Martina Navratilova for many years with many top male partners, including Emilio Sanchez, Paul Annacone, Heinz Gunthardt, Leander Paes and others. Current power couple Stefanos Tsitsipas and Paula Badosa have also discussed a mixed doubles pairing. Unfortunately, many times some of these superstar mixed doubles pairings have ended with one player or the other pulling out of the competition because they have advanced far in the singles draw and they want/need to rest. This famously happened with Graf and McEnroe paired in Wimbledon mixed in 1999, but withdrew in the semifinals against Anna Kournikova and Jonas Bjorkman as Graf had reached the singles final and needed to rest. (McEnroe was famously not happy with the decision.) Despite many opportunities over the last year, Tsitsipas and Badosa have yet to pair in Grand Slam mixed doubles, scheduling around their singles matches have been the biggest issues, including this year at the French Open here https://www.reuters.com/sports/tennis/tsitsidosa-withdraw-french-open-mixed-doubles-2024-06-03
The same argument as far as starting the men’s and women’s doubles tournament later has been made by me as you can read here: https://www.worldtennismagazine.com/archives/21267 and watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGp1JzwEsM&t=82s
