Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík Win US Open Mixed Doubles Title
Under the lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium, long after the celebrity cameos had gone and the noise around Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz had faded, the mixed doubles event finally belonged to the players still swinging rackets rather than reputations.
Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík seized it.
The Czech pair rode a late-night surge and a nerveless match tiebreak to beat Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6 (10-6) on Wednesday, collecting the US Open mixed doubles title and a $1m cheque that has reshaped the status of this once-overlooked event.
From sideshow to showpiece
For many on site this week, the mixed doubles “moment” had already happened: Williams returning to competition for the first time in four years, Alcaraz testing his wrist after four months out. Both were gone by the quarter-finals.
The players left behind knew better. The real prize sat on Wednesday night’s schedule.
This revamped mixed doubles has been a lightning rod since tournament organizers tore up the old script last year. They moved it to the week before singles, slashed the draw to 16 teams and inflated the winners’ purse from $200,000 to $1m. Singles stars signed up; doubles specialists, pushed out, bristled. Purists questioned whether four-game sets, no-ad scoring and a 10-point tiebreak could really sit alongside traditional grand slam titles.
The pushback landed. This year, organizers added an eight-team qualifying draw to open the door again for doubles experts. The result was a curious blend: specialists fighting for a living, marquee singles names dropping in for a high-stakes hit-out, and a format designed to keep rallies short and drama high.
By Tuesday night, the script had twisted again. The biggest names – Novak Djokovic, Aryna Sabalenka, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Alex Eala – were already out. So were all four specialist teams. What remained was a quartet of hybrid pairings and a competition that, almost by accident, had become exactly what the USTA wanted: fast, unpredictable, and fun.
Monfils and Svitolina’s run hits a wall
No team drew more affection than Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils, a couple off the court, a curiosity on it. Married since 2021, parents to a three-year-old daughter, they had somehow never played doubles together before this week. Both have long singles résumés; neither has ever gone beyond a major semi-final.
They arrived at Ashe on Wednesday riding the momentum of two wins, the crowd firmly on their side. Against Bencic and Cobolli, they edged a tight first set by leaning into long exchanges and disciplined serving. At 7-7 in the tiebreak, chaos intervened: Bencic’s backhand drilled her out-of-position partner, and Cobolli followed with a double fault. Set Svitolina and Monfils.
Cobolli’s frustration was obvious as the second set opened. He double-faulted to start his service game, then stared down triple break point. That was the hinge of the night. He wriggled out of it, held serve, and something in the match flipped.
The Italian–Swiss pair broke in the third game from 0-40 down, then again two games later as Monfils’ energy dipped. The rallies stayed long; the scoreboard did not. As the match ticked past an hour, Svitolina and Monfils began to fade, even as Ashe found its loudest voice of the evening for them.
Bencic and Cobolli closed like a team that had seen the edge and stepped away from it. They won 21 of the last 26 points, steamrolling the second set and the match tiebreak to reach the final.
Czechs survive a thriller
If the first semi-final had a clear emotional hook, the second had the cleaner tennis.
Muchová, playing her first matches since losing the Wimbledon final in June, and 6ft 5in Menšík took on Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev in a meeting that showcased the format at its best: short sets, but no shortage of tension.
The Czechs leaned on Menšík’s aggressive net work and Muchová’s returns to claim the opening set in an 8-6 tiebreak, sealed by a feathered backhand volley from Muchová. Andreeva and Rublev answered in kind, flattening winners down the tramlines and forcing the Czechs to scrap for every point in the second set.
The match tiebreak became a tug-of-war. Andreeva and Rublev earned two match points. Menšík’s serve and Muchová’s composure erased them. Four straight points later, the Czechs were through, 5-4 (8-6), 3-5 (11-9), with barely time to breathe.
They had 17 minutes before walking back onto Ashe for the final.
A final decided in the margins
The lack of a proper break should have punished them. It didn’t – at least not at first.
Muchová and Menšík came out swinging, striking eight winners in the opening set. Menšík pounded down four aces, and the Czechs pocketed it 6-3, looking fresher than the schedule suggested.
Then the familiar Bencic–Cobolli surge arrived.
They had already shown against Monfils and Svitolina that they could come back from the edge. Down a set in the final, they broke a shaky Muchová to lead 4-1 in the second, using Bencic’s clean ball-striking to drag the Czechs wide and Cobolli’s renewed confidence on serve to lock in the lead. At 5-1, Bencic whipped a cross-court forehand in the seventh game that sealed the set and forced the title into a 10-point shootout.
The tiebreak exposed the thinnest margins. Muchová and Menšík landed their first serves when it mattered; Bencic and Cobolli did not. The Swiss–Italian duo netted three of four serves late. Menšík, staring at triple championship point, uncorked his seventh ace of the night.
Title won. Clock nudging midnight. Trophy raised to a stadium that had thinned, but not forgotten them.
A three-week US Open – and a Czech springboard
The mixed doubles final closed a stretch that has quietly extended the US Open into a three-week festival. Ashe was mostly full for the semi-finals. On Tuesday it was packed for a pair of exhibition matches honoring Roger Federer, with Andy Roddick, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi and the 20-time major champion himself turning the court into a nostalgia show.
This week, though, also gave Muchová and Menšík something more tangible than sentiment.
Both insisted their eyes were fixed on the singles draw throughout. Muchová, ranked No 6 in the world, has already reached two major finals and a semi-final in New York. Menšík is in the best season of his young career and still chasing a first appearance beyond the third round at a slam.
Mixed doubles, for him, was new territory entirely. He had never played it before this tournament. Now he leaves Ashe with a title, a fortune in prize money and something harder to quantify – the feeling of closing out tight moments on the sport’s loudest stage.
Singles begins on Sunday. The opposition stiffens, the format stretches out, the margins grow more unforgiving. The Czechs know that. They also know they’ve already walked into Ashe this week, served for a title and found the line.
How far can that kind of confidence carry them when the points start to count even more?
