Muchova-Mensik Win The Mixed: Cobolli Falls In The Final

Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik have won the US Open mixed doubles event, beating Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6, 10-6. The Czech pair were unseeded and take home the one million dollars that goes to the winners.

Muchova and Mensik walked out for the final less than an hour after closing their semi-final. Against Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev they had come back from 3-0 down and then from 8-5 down in the deciding tie-break, saving two match points, to win 5-4(6), 3-5, 11-9. Bencic and Cobolli, the fourth seeds, arrived from an equally long semi-final against Elina Svitolina and Gaël Monfils, turned around 4-5(7), 4-1, 10-5.

In the final the Czechs broke Bencic's serve immediately and closed out the first set without trouble. The second went the other way just as clearly. In the long tie-break that decides the title, a run of four straight points gave Muchova and Mensik the cushion they needed to manage the finish.

The event runs on the revamped mixed-doubles format, packed into the days before the main draw: short sets to four games with a tie-break at 3-3 in the earlier rounds (rising to five games in the semi-finals, with a tie-break at 4-4), full sets to six in the final, and a ten-point tie-break in place of a third set. The top seeds, Aryna Sabalenka and Novak Djokovic, had already gone out to Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten.

For Cobolli the final comes a few days after Cincinnati, where he went as far as the first Masters 1000 semi-final of his career before losing to Arthur Fils. In New York the singles draw is next.