NEW YORK (AP) — Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka and 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic headline the initial list of 16 teams entered into the U.S. Open mixed doubles championship.
The tournament was overhauled last year, with a $1 million prize going to the winners, in an effort to get top singles players to compete. Many of those types of stars were listed among the teams announced Monday by the U.S. Tennis Association.
Iga Swiatek and Casper Ruud, the runners-up in 2025, are entered again, along with Elena Rybakina and Taylor Fritz, the Japanese duo of Naomi Osaka and Kei Nishikori, and Jessica Pegula and Jack Draper.
The main draw will be played over two days on Aug. 25-26, with all the matches set to be held in Arthur Ashe Stadium and Louis Armstrong Stadium, the two biggest venues at the U.S. Open, and televised on ESPN's properties.
Teams can enter up until Aug. 17, when the six duos with the best combined singles rankings at the time will be automatically entered into the main draw. That means Sabalenka, the two-time defending U.S. Open women's champion, and Djokovic, still ranked No. 5 on the men's tour at age 39, will be safely into the field.
Eight teams will be given wild cards by the USTA, and two other teams will play their way into the field through a qualifying tournament to be held Aug. 24.
The remainder of the teams that were entered as of Monday:
Mirra Andreeva and Andrey Rublev, Belinda Bencic and Flavio Cobolli, Diana Shnaider and Daniil Medvedev, Amanda Anisimova and Learner Tien, Alex Eala and Felix Auger-Aliassime, Leylah Fernandez and Frances Tiafoe, Taylor Townsend and Alexander Zverev, Elena-Gabriela Ruse and Nuno Borges, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, Katerina Siniakova and Henry Patten, and siblings Peyton Stearns and Preston Stearns.
Errani and Vavassori are the two-time defending U.S. Open champions. The Italians needed a wild card to get into last year's event because their singles ranking was too low, and that will be the case again this year.
The U.S. Open was initially criticized last year because the format of the event shut out doubles specialists such as Errani and Vavassori, but the tournament certainly seemed a success, helping draw 78,000 fans to the grounds and selling out Ashe both days.
"Any time you can bring women and men together on the same team, you showcase tennis at its best. This is exactly what the mixed doubles championship does," USTA CEO Craig Tiley said in a statement.
"The mixed doubles championship is an innovation that will engage new audiences and give our fans another opportunity to see the biggest stars compete together.”
Errani and Vavassori were the only traditional doubles team in last year's tournament. There is a chance for more this year — Siniakova and Patten are doubles specialists — with the addition of the eight-team qualifying tournament, which will include six direct entries and two wild cards.
The format will be best-of-three-set matches with sets to four games, tiebreakers at 4-all and a 10-point match tiebreak instead of a third set, through the semifinals. The final will be standard scoring with sets to six games and a tiebreaker at 6-all, and a 10-point match tiebreaker if necessary.
AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Novak Djokovic of Serbia plays a volley against Roman Saffiullin of Russia in their fourth round men's singles match at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Sunday, July 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey urged a judge on Monday to throw out federal charges against him, arguing that a photo of seashells arranged on a beach he posted on social media was not a call to violence against President Donald Trump but protected political speech.
Comey's lawyers argue the government cannot prove the Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47" constituted a “true threat" against the Republican president, who fired Comey in 2017 and has publicly called for his prosecution. The slogan — which has long meant to "get rid of" or “eject" — has been featured on thousands of items sold online and regularly displayed at protests, defense lawyers wrote in court papers.
"But the government now singles out Mr. Comey to prosecute one of the President’s most prominent critics for publishing another person’s statement of political opposition," his attorney's wrote. “That attempt to suppress core political speech contravenes both the statutes at issue and the First Amendment.”
The seashells case against Comey was the second in months targeting the ex-FBI director, a long-running Trump foe whom the president over the years has called a “corrupt piece of garbage” and other pejorative names.
An earlier case in Virginia accusing Comey of lying to Congress was dismissed last November after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who charged him and another Trump adversary, New York Attorney General Letitia James, was illegally appointed to the job.
More broadly, the case is part of a retribution campaign by the Trump administration Justice Department, which has initiated investigations across the country into individuals the president does not like. Comey has long drawn Trump's ire for his role overseeing the early months of an investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of that year’s election.
The two-count indictment charges Comey with “knowingly and willfully” making a threat to “take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon” Trump and with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. It does not provide evidence that Comey knowingly threatened Trump, especially since Comey has said the opposite, but suggested a “reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret” the message as a threat.
Comey was interviewed by the Secret Service last year over the post after Trump administration officials asserted that he was advocating the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. Comey deleted the post shortly after it was made, writing: “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and “I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
“Even if ‘86 47’ could implausibly be read to suggest violence, a reasonable observer would still understand Mr. Comey’s post as mere political hyperbole, not a true threat,” Comey's lawyers wrote. “The Supreme Court has rejected threats prosecutions based on speech far more directly threatening than Mr. Comey’s seashells post here.”
The Justice Department has not elaborated on any evidence of intent the government has. But acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier this year that prosecutors in every case prove intent with “witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself to the extent it’s appropriate.”
“And that’s how we’ll prove intent in this case,” Blanche said in April, shortly after he was elevated to lead the department after Pam Bondi's firing.
Trump, in a Fox News Channel interview last year, accused Comey of knowing “exactly what that meant.”
“A child knows what that meant,” Trump said. “If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”
FILE - Former FBI Director James Comey speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 8, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
