Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík Win $1M Mixed Doubles Title at US Open
On a humid New York night when Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz were already long gone from the draw and the celebrity gloss had faded from Arthur Ashe Stadium, Karolína Muchová and Jakub Menšík quietly turned the mixed doubles experiment into their own $1m showcase.
They arrived as singles threats. They left as champions.
The Czech pair outlasted Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6 (10-6) in a final that finished just before midnight, closing a week in which the mixed doubles – often an afterthought – became a three-week pillar of the US Open.
Singles stars, doubles stage
For once, this was not a playground for doubles lifers. It was a singles takeover.
Muchová and Menšík had already survived a knife-edge semi-final, edging Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev 5-4 (8-6) 3-5 (11-9). On the other side of the draw, Bencic and Cobolli had squeezed past Elina Svitolina and Gael Monfils 4-5 (7-9) 4-1 (10-5). Both semi-finals stretched past an hour, both decided in the quickfire, high‑stress tiebreaks that define this reimagined format.
“This format of a tournament, it went really quickly,” Muchová said, still processing a title run that doubled as her first competitive outing since losing the Wimbledon final in June. “I’m obviously super happy that we managed to win. It was not my expectation.”
That sense of surprise fit the event. Since the tournament was revamped last year to lure big names, the mixed doubles has been a flashpoint. Organizers moved it to the week before singles, slashed the draw to 16 teams and jacked the winners’ cheque from $200,000 to $1m. The price of that glamour? Doubles specialists pushed to the margins and a debate over whether four-game sets, no-ad scoring and a 10-point match tiebreak still merited grand slam status.
Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, both specialists, won the 2025 title, but the grumbling never really stopped.
This year brought a partial course correction. An eight-team qualifying draw opened a door for more doubles purists. The marquee remained the same: Serena Williams back in New York for the first time since her 2022 farewell, Alcaraz returning from a wrist injury, Novak Djokovic, Aryna Sabalenka, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Alex Eala. By Tuesday night, every one of those headline acts had exited in the first round or the quarters.
So had all four specialist teams.
What was left was not pedigree, but personality.
Beer, maroon, and a married team
Asked how she would spend the hours before the final, Bencic answered with one word: “Beer.” Cobolli’s startled reaction drew as much laughter as the line itself.
Muchová and Menšík went a different route, coordinating pink-and-maroon outfits. When Muchová first suggested the look, Menšík had to ask what maroon was. He figured it out quickly enough.
Andreeva, still a teenager, joked that she once had a crush on the nine-years-older Rublev. Their on-court chemistry backed it up, even if they fell just short.
Then there was the sport’s most familiar pairing. Monfils and Svitolina, married since 2021 and parents to a three-year-old daughter, had somehow never played doubles together before this week. Svitolina sits at No 9 in the world; Monfils, ranked 307 and retiring at the end of the season, is in New York on a singles wild card. Neither has ever gone beyond a grand slam semi-final.
They played like it mattered.
Monfils and Svitolina run out of gas
In their semi-final, Monfils and Svitolina carried the momentum of two wins into a taut opening set against Bencic and Cobolli. They leaned on long rallies, held serve, and stole the tiebreak when chaos struck at 7-7: Bencic’s backhand drilled her out-of-position partner, then Cobolli double-faulted to hand over the set.
The Italian’s frustration was obvious. It got worse when he opened the second set with another double fault. Then came the twist. Cobolli saved triple break point in that same game, the moment the match turned. From there, he and Bencic steadied, snatching the night’s first break in the third game from 0-40 down and then breaking Monfils with ease two games later.
As the clock ticked past an hour, Monfils and Svitolina simply faded. The Ashe crowd roared for them, the loudest noise of the night, but sentiment doesn’t win points. Bencic and Cobolli claimed 21 of the last 26 to storm into the final.
Czechs ride the edge
The second semi-final was tighter still.
Menšík, 6ft 5in and fearless at the net, attacked everything. Muchová’s returns bit hard and early. They edged the first set in an 8-6 tiebreak, sealed by a delicate backhand volley from Muchová that floated past Andreeva and Rublev.
The Russians answered. They started threading winners down the alleys, forcing the Czechs to grind for every point and dragging the contest into another deciding tiebreak.
The tension rose with each serve. Andreeva and Rublev earned two match points. They never converted them. Menšík’s big delivery held, Muchová stayed ice-cold on the return, and the Czechs reeled off the final four points to escape.
Then came the catch: just 17 minutes before the final.
A final in fast-forward
You wouldn’t have known it from the opening set.
Muchová and Menšík came out sharp, striking eight winners and riding Menšík’s four aces to a 6-3 start. Their timing, their patterns, their confidence – all intact, despite the brutal turnaround.
The energy swing arrived in the second. Bencic and Cobolli, as they had against Monfils and Svitolina, found a surge. A shaky service game from Muchová gave them a 4-1 lead. By the seventh game, Bencic was cracking cross‑court forehands and the match was headed to a deciding tiebreak for the title and the million.
This time, the Czechs refused to blink.
Muchová and Menšík hit their spots on serve when it mattered most. Bencic and Cobolli, so precise during their comeback, netted three of four crucial points. On triple championship point, Menšík uncorked his seventh ace of the night. Trophy secured. Experiment vindicated.
A three-week US Open
By the time the silverware came out, Arthur Ashe Stadium had thinned. The atmosphere, though, had already done its job.
The night before, the same court had been packed for exhibition matches honoring Roger Federer, with Andy Roddick, John McEnroe, Andre Agassi and Federer himself drawing a nostalgia-soaked crowd. On semi-final night, Ashe was mostly full again. Mixed doubles, once squeezed into the margins of the schedule, had become a central act in a three-week festival.
For Muchová and Menšík, all of this still sits in the shadow of what comes next. Throughout their run, they insisted their eyes were fixed on singles. Muchová, world No 6, has already played two major finals and reached the last four in New York. Menšík is in the middle of a career-best season and chasing his first appearance beyond the third round here.
Singles begins Sunday. The road back to an Ashe title will be steeper, the margins thinner, the spotlight harsher.
But they walk into it as champions, with a week of tight tiebreaks and late‑night pressure already in their legs – and a new question hanging over the grounds: if this is what mixed doubles looks like now, who wouldn’t want a piece of it?
