Karolina Muchova and Jakub Mensik walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday as an unseeded Czech pairing out for a hit and a laugh. They walked out as US Open mixed doubles champions.
In a final that swung wildly before settling on their side, the duo beat Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli 6-3, 1-6, 10-6 to claim their first Grand Slam title together and the first mixed crown of this year’s final major.
Fast start under the lights
From the opening game, Mensik set the tone. The 20-year-old unloaded on serve, backing up Muchova’s all-court craft with raw power that immediately put Bencic and Cobolli under pressure.
The Czechs broke early and never really loosened their grip on the first set. Mensik’s serve, in particular, turned into a weapon Bencic and Cobolli struggled to read. On set point, he drove the message home, thundering an ace past Bencic to close out the opener in under half an hour. One set, statement made.
Bencic hits back
The response from the Olympic champion was sharp and ruthless.
Bencic stepped inside the baseline, took the ball early, and forced the issue on return. At 2-1 in the second set, she drilled a clean return winner to break serve for a 3-1 lead, snapping the Czechs’ momentum and igniting the Cobolli partnership.
From there, the Swiss-Italian pair surged. Cobolli tightened up his own service games while Bencic dictated from the back of the court, dragging Muchova and Mensik into defensive positions and punishing anything short. The reward came at 5-1, when Bencic’s forehand clipped the tape and skipped cruelly beyond Muchova to level the match. The luck was with the team that had earned it by flipping the tempo of the contest.
Match tiebreak, Czech nerve
So it came down to a 10-point shootout, and that was where Mensik’s serve and the team’s chemistry took over again.
The young Czech, who had been a force all evening, found another gear. He combined heavy deliveries with quick, decisive work at the net, cutting off angles and forcing rushed replies. The pressure mounted with every point.
At 7-4, the Czechs sensed daylight. Mensik pounced on a short ball and punched away a firm volley to stretch the lead to 8-4, the kind of point that shifts shoulders and body language on both sides of the net. Muchova then stepped up with her best serve of the night, a timely delivery that set up championship points and underlined how well the partnership had blended power and poise.
One swing later, it was over. Mensik fired yet another ace, this one the most important of the lot, and leapt in celebration as the title was sealed 10-6. The first trophy of the season’s final Grand Slam belonged to them.
From match points down to the title
Their run to the trophy had already carried a touch of escape artistry. In the semifinals, Muchova and Mensik stared down two match points against Russians Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev, only to claw their way out and book their place in the final. That survival act gave their triumph on Ashe an extra layer of resilience.
The mood after the win stayed light, true to the way they had approached the event all week.
“I think in the end the matching outfits made the difference for us,” Muchova joked during the trophy ceremony, leaning into the sense that this was a team that had come together almost casually and then caught fire.
“I wasn’t really expecting to be standing here tonight. We came out just to have fun and enjoy these mixed doubles and now we are standing here. So we did something right,” she added, before turning to congratulate Bencic and Cobolli. Then came the line that hinted at broader Czech ambitions in New York: “I think this is a really good start to the US Open for all of us.”
A new stage for mixed doubles
Their victory also puts an early spotlight on the US Open’s revamped mixed doubles format. The 16-team draw began on Tuesday in its second year, trimmed and sharpened to feature leading singles players and to pull bigger crowds into the grounds in the week before the singles main draw.
On this evidence, it is working. Big names, tight matches, a final decided by a flurry of aces and net rushes under the Ashe lights — and a Czech pair who turned a “let’s have fun” entry into a Grand Slam title.
If this is just the warm-up act for the fortnight in New York, the bar has been set high.
