Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori confirm supremacy to win our open mixed doubles finals

ACruis two hectic days in New York, Andrea Vavassori and Sara Errani have repeatedly made their intentions clear. If the only double specialist team in a tournament that had banned the rest of their kind, they were on a mission to prove their value by succeeding on the field.

Shortly before midnight at an Arthur Ashe Stadium was still filled with raw spectators, the mission was completed. They spectacularly triumphed us open mixed Doubles Championship by closing the Star Singles combination of Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud, the third seeds, 6-3, 5-7 (10-6) in a supreme, intense struggle to defend their title.

Since the US Open his transformed mixed Doubles tournament announced six months ago, which was moved by the qualifying Week of the US Open and renamed a short classification with a submission criteria that give overwhelming preference to Singles players, Vavassori and Errani have been two of the greatest criticians.

A wildcard combination because of their victory last year, they came up in this tournament that is determined to support that criticism by proving the value of double players on the field. While they went through the draw, many of their double specialist colleagues offered their full support. “I think this is also for the doubles who couldn’t play this tournament,” said it afterwards.

In a draw filled with many of the best tennis players in the world, Errani and Vavassori made a decisive case for the importance of teamwork in this discipline. They demonstrated the value of sharp, decisive networks, strategy, formations and intelligence on the field. They were always a step ahead of the opponent and they put ruthless pressure on with their stifling sparkle on the net.

After leaving them to the final without dropping a set, the title was definitely defined in an incredible match by sharp contrasts, the teamwork, tactical nous and changing formations of the Italian couple against the Baseline Supremation of Swiatek and Ruud, who spent the night with the neat of the net. They then launched a spectacular comeback to force a last set of match treak before the Italians closed the game. “You have proven that mixed doubles are tactically smarter than players of singles, I think,” said Swiateek.

While the victors made their points clear, the US Open organizers did that in many ways. This event has generated criticism for a wide range of reasons, from the way in which it has removed the double specialists to the changes imposed by the US Open without any input from the players themselves.

The aim of this tournament, however, was to create a larger stage for a format that the organizers were outdated, and the interest it generated it cannot be denied. Four days before the start of the US Open, a completely full of Arthur Ashe Stadium was present to witness the climax of an event that was little more than a footnote in recent years.

The evening started with Swiatek and Ruud disappeared the top seeds Jessica Pegula and Jack Draper in the first semifinal. During their warming up, the Op-Court MC suggested that Ruud could win his first Grand Slam title towards the end of the night and Draper described as a double semi-finalist of Grand Slam. They were extremely shocking claims that underline another important point of disputes: should this event be categorized as a grand slam title or, given the shortened size and limiting access conditions, is it just an exhibition?

Perhaps none of these definitions is suitable and this is just a special event in its own category. While some teams, such as Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu, participated for the Good Vibes, this second night presented an intense, high -quality evening evening of tennis. It is clear that the singles players have much greater priorities, and they will not lose sleep about losing a mixed doubles event in their training week before the real tournament starts, but they are also intensely competitive and they have competed with determination and full effort each Wednesday.

At a time when countless worldwide sports, such as athletics, swimming and even gymnastics, have introduced team events for mixed gender, this event is also a reminder of the failure of tennis to benefit from one of the unique sales arguments: the fact that the best male and female players share the podium in the greatest tournaments. A clear feature of mixed doubles, compared to those other mixed gender events, is that the female players are more than able to keep their own and make decisive winning plays against their male counterparts. For the majority of the first semifinal, for example, Pegula was the best player on the field.

In general, the two days of the competition were very fun. This tournament included the unforgettable sight of the 45-year-old Venus Williams who adorned Andrey Rublev from the basic line, during the runners of Match Point during Karolina Muchova and Rublev’s victory over Williams and Reilly Opelka. A month after returning a 153 MPH Serve in Wimbledon, Taylor Fritz sometimes struggled with the 70 MPH from Sara Errani for the first time. The most striking, a year after their triumph over a field of specialists, the best mixed Double Team in the world confirmed their supremacy by beating the singles super stars. For their efforts, they earned $ 1 million prize money, a handsome wage increase of $ 800K in just one year.