Randy Walker

Long before mixed doubles became a fan favorite at the U.S. Open—and long before today’s star-studded pairings—men and women were sharing the court at America’s national championship.

There is a fascinating irony in the history of Grand Slam tennis: mixed doubles, an event that has sometimes been treated as a sideshow to singles and traditional doubles, is actually one of the oldest championship competitions in the sport.

And its Grand Slam history begins in the United States.

The first official Grand Slam mixed doubles championship was played at the U.S. National Championships in 1892, the tournament that eventually became the U.S. Open. The champions were Ireland’s Mabel Cahill and American Clarence Hobart, who defeated Elisabeth Moore and Rodmond Beach, 6-1, 6-3. The U.S. Open itself recognizes 1892 as the beginning of its official mixed doubles championship.

That makes the U.S. Championships the birthplace of Grand Slam mixed doubles.

And more than 130 years later, the event is still part of the U.S. Open.

Before 1892: Mixed Doubles Was Already Being Played

There is an important historical wrinkle.

Although 1892 was the first official U.S. National mixed doubles championship, mixed-gender doubles competition had already appeared at the tournament in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Historical championship records list mixed doubles competitions in 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890 and 1891, but those early events are generally designated as unofficial rather than championship-status competitions.

That distinction is significant.

The 1892 tournament therefore wasn’t necessarily the first time a man and a woman had teamed together at the U.S. Championships. Rather, it was the year mixed doubles became an official national championship event.

And that happened at a time when American tennis was still in its infancy.

The first U.S. National Championships had been staged only 11 years earlier, in 1881, at the Newport Casino in Rhode Island. The tournament began as a men’s championship and gradually expanded to include women and additional doubles competitions. (US Open)

In 1892, the championship was still geographically scattered. The men’s tournament was held at Newport, while the women’s events—including mixed doubles—were played at the Philadelphia Cricket Club. (Wikipedia)

So the first Grand Slam mixed doubles championship wasn’t played in the New York stadium we associate with today’s U.S. Open.

It was played on grass in Philadelphia.

Mabel Cahill: The First Grand Slam Mixed Doubles Champion

The woman who occupies a special place in this history is Mabel Cahill.

Cahill was already making history in 1892. She won the U.S. women’s singles championship that year, defeating Elisabeth Moore in a five-set final, and also captured the mixed doubles title with Clarence Hobart.

It was an extraordinary achievement for a period when women’s competitive tennis was still developing.

Cahill’s mixed doubles triumph also established a pattern that would become one of the event’s enduring attractions: a great singles player teaming with a leading player of the opposite sex and combining different styles, strengths and strategies.

Mixed doubles was not simply women’s tennis plus men’s tennis.

It was a different game.

The court was the same size as a doubles court, but the positioning, serving patterns, net play and return strategies created a unique tactical puzzle. Players had to understand not only their own games but also how to protect and complement a partner whose game could be dramatically different.

The U.S. Championships Quickly Developed a Mixed Doubles Tradition

Once mixed doubles became an official championship, it established itself as a permanent part of the U.S. Nationals.

Among the early stars was Juliette Atkinson, who won three consecutive mixed doubles championships with Edwin Fischer from 1894 through 1896. The U.S. Open’s records still list that team among the most successful partnerships in tournament history. (US Open)

Another remarkable early champion was Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman.

Wightman would eventually win six U.S. mixed doubles championships, and she was one of the dominant figures in American tennis during the early decades of the 20th century. Her success illustrated something important about mixed doubles: it could provide elite women with another opportunity to compete alongside the game’s leading men on the biggest stage.

And mixed doubles wasn’t merely an American curiosity.

It was becoming an international championship discipline.

Wimbledon Joins the Party

The Championships at Wimbledon didn’t introduce mixed doubles until 1913—more than two decades after the U.S. Nationals.

That year, mixed doubles received championship status at Wimbledon, with Hope Crisp and Agnes Tuckey taking the inaugural title.

The timing is revealing.

The U.S. Championships had already been staging official mixed doubles for 21 years.

Wimbledon followed in 1913, and the event became an established part of the world’s most prestigious tennis tournament.

The French Championships and Australasian Championships came later.

The Australian event introduced mixed doubles in 1922.

The French Championships introduced mixed doubles as part of the international championship in 1925. That tournament produced one of the most famous mixed doubles champions of the era: Suzanne Lenglen, who won the 1925 title with Jacques Brugnon.

By 1925, all four tournaments that would ultimately become today’s Grand Slams had mixed doubles competitions.

But the United States had been there first.

From the U.S. Championships to the U.S. Open

The name changed, the locations changed and eventually the surface changed, but mixed doubles remained part of the American championship.

The U.S. Nationals moved from Newport to the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills in 1915, eventually becoming synonymous with that famous Queens venue.

Then came the biggest transformation of all.

In 1968, the U.S. Championships became the U.S. Open, as professionals were finally permitted to compete alongside amateurs. The inaugural U.S. Open was staged at Forest Hills.

Mixed doubles survived the transition.

In other words, the mixed doubles championship wasn’t something invented for the modern professional era.

It was inherited from the U.S. National Championships.

That is one of the most easily overlooked facts about the event.

The Margaret duPont Era

If one player represents the golden age of U.S. mixed doubles, it may be Margaret Osborne duPont.

Her record at the U.S. Championships is staggering.

DuPont won nine U.S. mixed doubles championships, in addition to 13 women’s doubles titles and three singles championships. The U.S. Open credits her with 25 U.S. Championships titles overall—the most of any player in tournament history.

Her mixed doubles championships came between 1941 and 1960.

She wasn’t merely a great women’s doubles player who occasionally played mixed.

She was one of the greatest mixed doubles players the U.S. Championships ever produced.

Her partnership with Bill Talbert was particularly formidable. The pair won four consecutive titles from 1943 through 1946, while also reaching six finals together.

That era demonstrates how seriously mixed doubles was treated by the game’s elite players.

A Remarkable Husband-and-Wife Story

The history of U.S. mixed doubles also contains a particularly charming footnote.

In 1905, Augusta Schultz Hobart and Clarence Hobart became the only husband-and-wife team ever to win the U.S. mixed doubles championship.

They defeated Elisabeth Moore and Edward Dewhurst, 6-2, 6-4.

The achievement has never been duplicated.

Plenty of famous tennis families have won U.S. doubles championships. The Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, became the most famous sibling doubles team of the modern era, while other families have produced generations of champions.

But only the Hobarts have captured the U.S. mixed doubles championship as husband and wife.

Billie Jean King and the Open Era

The arrival of Open tennis in 1968 created another important chapter.

Suddenly, professional and amateur players could compete together at the Grand Slams. The U.S. Open’s transformation was part of the broader revolution that changed tennis forever.

Mixed doubles became a stage for many of the greatest players of the era.

Billie Jean King won three U.S. mixed doubles championships, including two with Australian Owen Davidson. Margaret Court won eight, while Marty Riessen became one of the leading male mixed doubles players of the period.

The event also reflected the changing role of women in tennis.

In 1973, the U.S. Open became the first Grand Slam to award equal prize money to men and women in singles. That landmark decision was part of the tournament’s broader history of challenging traditional boundaries.

Mixed doubles, meanwhile, had been crossing the gender line on the tennis court for more than 80 years.

From Forest Hills to Flushing Meadows

In 1978, the U.S. Open moved from Forest Hills to its new home at Flushing Meadows.

It was a transformational moment. The tournament moved onto hard courts and into a much larger public facility, eventually becoming one of the biggest sporting events in the world.

Mixed doubles made the journey as well.

The event’s history therefore encompasses virtually every major stage in the evolution of American tennis:

Newport. Philadelphia. Forest Hills. Flushing Meadows. Amateur tennis. Open tennis. Grass. Clay. Hard courts.

And through it all, men and women continued to share the court.

The Modern Era

The list of U.S. Open mixed doubles champions reads almost like a who’s who of tennis.

Martina Navratilova won three titles. Billie Jean King won three. Margaret Court won eight. Bob Bryan won four. Max Mirnyi won three. Todd Woodbridge won three. Jamie Murray won three consecutive titles from 2017 through 2019. (US Open)

And then there was Serena Williams.

Williams won the U.S. Open mixed doubles championship in 1998 with Max Mirnyi—the only mixed doubles title of her career at the tournament. More than two decades later, the event would again provide one of the most intriguing possibilities in tennis history.

Mixed Doubles in the Spotlight Again

In recent years, mixed doubles had increasingly been pushed toward the margins of Grand Slam tennis.

That changed dramatically at the U.S. Open in 2025, when the tournament revamped the competition, reducing the field to 16 teams, introducing abbreviated matches and dramatically increasing the prize money. The changes were designed to attract the sport’s biggest singles stars and put mixed doubles back in the spotlight.

The strategy worked from a publicity standpoint.

Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Iga Swiatek, Naomi Osaka and other major singles names became part of the mixed doubles conversation. The 2025 event also demonstrated the tension inherent in the new approach: established doubles specialists argued that their discipline was being sacrificed for star power, while the USTA pointed to the enormous interest generated by the new format.

And now, in 2026, the spotlight is even brighter.

Serena Williams has returned to the U.S. Open, teaming with Carlos Alcaraz in mixed doubles. It is Williams’ first competitive appearance at Flushing Meadows since 2022 and her first U.S. Open mixed doubles appearance since winning the title with Mirnyi in 1998.

The pairing is almost impossibly modern—and yet, in another sense, completely traditional.

A great woman player.

A great man player.

One court.

One team.

One championship.

That is precisely what the U.S. Championships created more than 130 years ago.

The Original Grand Slam Experiment in Equality

There is a larger story behind mixed doubles.

Long before equal prize money, before Open tennis, before professional women’s tennis, before the WTA and ATP, mixed doubles provided one of the few places in elite tennis where men and women competed together, as teammates, for the same championship.

The U.S. Championships didn’t invent the idea of a man and woman sharing a tennis court. But in 1892, it did something historically important: it made mixed doubles an official Grand Slam championship.

That makes the U.S. Open’s mixed doubles event more than a novelty.

It is a living link to the earliest days of American championship tennis.

From Mabel Cahill and Clarence Hobart in Philadelphia in 1892 to Serena Williams and Carlos Alcaraz at Flushing Meadows in 2026, the event has survived changing eras, changing venues, changing surfaces and changing ideas about professional tennis.

And perhaps that is the most remarkable part of its history.

Mixed doubles didn’t suddenly become fashionable in 2025 or 2026.

It has been part of the DNA of the U.S. Championships since the very beginning.

The U.S. Open isn’t merely bringing mixed doubles back into the spotlight.

It is rediscovering one of the oldest traditions in the history of its own tournament.