Alex de Minaur confirms US Open mixed plans with fiancée Katie Boulter

DUBAI—Alex de Minaur is looking forward to the prospect of an on-court reunion with fiancée Katie Boulter, teasing a mixed doubles berth at the newly revamped US Open event.

“Me personally, I really enjoy playing mixed doubles, so I think it's going to be fun to hopefully play some mixed with Katie, which will be exciting,” De Minaur said in his Media Day interview at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.

The United States Tennis Association (USTA) announced earlier this month that the mixed doubles draw would take place during its annual Fan Week—rather than during the tournament’s second week—and will be shortened a 16-team draw emphasizing the participation of singles players like De Minaur and Boulter, who last teamed up for mixed doubles at the 2023 Wimbledon Championships.

...right now for a singles player, you're not really going to play mixed doubles because your priority is obviously the singles. It's halfway through the tournament, so it makes it way too difficult, especially for the men who are playing best-of-five sets. They want to make sure they get their recovery in, all that stuff. The way it's proposed now, it definitely entices a lot more of the singles players to play. Alex de Minaur on the US Open's changes to its mixed doubles tournament

“If I'm looking purely at myself and the situation I'm in, it does present an opportunity for me to play mixed doubles, which in previous years I probably wouldn't have done just because as the format is right now for a singles player, you're not really going to play mixed doubles because your priority is obviously the singles,” said De Minaur, later conceding the situation is less than ideal for doubles specialists, who will have to rely on wild card entries into the tournament.

“The way it's proposed now, it definitely entices a lot more of the singles players to play, and it's an opportunity.”

De Minaur and Boulter, who announced their engagement in December, are frequent fixtures at each other’s matches, their shared familiarity with the other’s tour making them a potentially dangerous pair when the event debuts in August.

“I feel like I've watched so many matches on the WTA Tour just by, yeah, watching Katie, right?” said De Minaur, who is the No. 2 seed in Dubai.

“I think we've both learned a lot from each other's tours. Before we were together, we probably didn't know as much. It's been kind of fun to have those two dynamics. We bounce off each other: she gives me advice, I give her advice. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. It's all with a good heart.”

De Minaur, who will play his first round against 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic, has enjoyed a consistent start to the 2025 season, completing a box set of Grand Slam quarterfinal appearances and finishing runner-up at the ABN AMRO Open in Rotterdam, losing in three sets to Carlos Alcaraz. The 26-year-old arrives in Doha after losing in the Qatar ExxonMobil Open quarterfinals to Andrey Rublev in a third-set tiebreaker.

“Obviously the last one stings a little bit,” De Minaur said, smiling, “because I feel like I had my chances. It just kind of slipped away in the very end.

“But look, it's all about putting myself in those situations, giving myself the opportunity to play a lot of matches, win a lot of matches. Hey, I'm doing the right things. I'm confident that it's going to lead me in the right direction and help me achieve the goals I want to achieve.”

In the same quarter as No. 8 seed Arthur Fils, De Minaur could face Rublev, seeded third, in the semifinals. Safe to assume Boulter has some thoughts on how De Minaur might exact revenge in Dubai.