1. Participation from the game’s stars
The growing interest in doubles spiked at the recent US Open, with the spectacular success of its reimagined mixed doubles event. That so many top players chose to compete in the event on the eve of the year’s final Grand Slam tournament gave doubles a great, and perhaps lasting, boost.
If the game has a “Mr. Tennis,” it has to be Taylor Fritz. There isn’t a more diligent, open-minded and dedicated student of the game. One month before the US Open, he said of the newly announced approach, “Mixed doubles is always a great challenge, and I’ve had some amazing experiences with it over the years, from the Olympics to the United Cup, and even the USO Mixed Madness last year.”
You just can’t buy that amount of positive publicity. The comment set the tone for the event, which ultimately featured many of the game’s top names: Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka, to name a few. But let’s be realistic: appearance money (as well as the champion’s haul of $1 million for fairly short work) was clearly an incentive. And nobody has suggested that its success will lead top players to increased participation at the tour level. Today’s singles game is just too demanding to expect that. But there are many other ways to keep doubles thriving.
Rajeev Ram, a still-active 41-year old—and six-time Grand Slam champion and former doubles No. 1—told me, “The USTA showed that they’re trying, they’re doing something different to put this particular discipline in the forefront. But changes over the years to the entry system, the ranking system, the scoring system haven’t enticed top people to play doubles. So pure logic tells me ‘No, there’s not a way [to recruit stars],’ But there may be other ways and we still haven’t tried to make the top doubles players stars of any kind.”
