Across Flushing Meadows at the 2024 US Open on Wednesday, the doubles draws stepped into the spotlight and quickly leapt into a busy first day of action.
With an eye on the favorites, it was a heartily successful day for Top 10-seeded duos playing Wednesday on both sides of the draw—all but one team sitting in that bracket successfully cleared their first-round hurdles.
There were also, of course, a few upsets and breakout performances in a jam-packed first day of doubles competition. USOpen.org brings you the best of the doubles action.
Women’s Doubles
Young phenom Mirra Andreeva, 17, headlined an upset over the No. 14-seeded pair of Cristina Bucsa and Xu Yifan to kickstart her doubles run. She and partner Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova knocked down the Spanish and Chinese nationals in a 6-3, 6-7(5), 7-6(4) trudge that ran neck-and-neck until the very end of the decisive 10-point tiebreak.
It was during the second set that the matchup started to simmer, with Bucsa and Xu fighting through five deuces in the fifth game to take their first lead of the match, 3-2. They were in peak form down that second-set stretch, saving three break points to win it in a tiebreak. The third set—also on its way to a tiebreak—wasn’t a walk in the park, but Andreeva and Pavlyuchenkova hung strong. Serving up six aces and saving five break points, the duo lunged across the finish line after two and a half hours of play.
Elsewhere, as the sun set over Court 10, the crowd cheering for Americans Ashlyn Krueger and Sloane Stephens could be heard from afar. The duo of upcomer Krueger and former US Open champ Stephens came tantalizingly close to picking off No. 11-seeded pair Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes Tormo in a hard-fought 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 loss.
At a 7-5, 2-0 jump to start the second set, the Americans looked to be in prime condition to triumph. But Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo had something to say about that—they went on to win six straight games to tally the second set, before elbowing through a tight third set to grab match victory.
Men’s Doubles
The marquee upset on the men’s side of Wednesday's draw, however, did belong to a scrappy American duo—and a wild-card entry at that.
The team Emilio Nava and Tristan Boyer (in his first ever Grand Slam match) took down the No. 9-seeded pair of Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin in three sets, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4. The two teams traded blows down evenly matched first and second sets to push into a third. It was during that third set that it became a nail-biter for both sides of the net. The two duos locked up at 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 and 4-4 before the young American team was able to scoot out front to take the match.
Not everyone was so lucky. On the other side of the spectrum, four of their fellow American wild card teams were quick to tumble down in first round losses, including this year’s USTA boys’ doubles champions, 18 year-olds Nikita Filin and Alexander Razeghi.
Mixed Doubles
Mixed doubles rolled out of the gate slowly Wednesday afternoon, as only four doubles matches made it to court.
Doubles star Katerina Siniakova, currently ranked No. 2 in the discipline, headlined that lineup. She and Aussie partner John Peers, a two-time doubles Slam champion in his own right, made quick work of the Brazilians on the other side of their net, dropping only three games to Luisa Stefani and Rafael Matos en route to a 6-2, 6-1 victory.
The other three mixed duos to emerge victorious on this first day of competition were American wildcard duo Tyra Caterina Grant and Aleksandar Kovacevic, Hsieh Su-Wei and Jan Zielinski, and Cristina Bucsa and Joran Vliegen.
