The unfortunate situation for Katerina Siniakova after Jannik Sinner's late US Open mixed doubles withdrawal decision

Katerina Siniakova is perhaps the most affected out of all of this situation in regards to World No.1, Jannik Sinner deciding against playing mixed doubles at the US Open with the Czech doubles star deciding instead of playing singles elsewhere this week to join forces with the Italian.

But an unfortunate proxy of Jannik Sinner not being able to fulfill his role in the team is that Siniakova has now been left empty handed with Ryan Harrison and Danielle Collins now filling the spot that was left by Sinner and Siniakova. Harrison and Collins have previously teamed up in mixed doubles twice losing to Arevalo and Hsieh during the 2023 US Open.

They also were due to team at the 2018 French Open but withdrew before it started. Now they head into the draw. Siniakova wasn't paired with a different partner and was removed entirely from the draw. She skipped Cleveland which is the WTA 250 this week in singles in order to play.

An 11 time Grand Slam doubles champion who has won Olympic gold in women's and mixed doubles as well as a former World No.1. She is the current World No.2 so still very much up there in the doubles reckoning and was a real coup for Sinner when it came to a replacement for Emma Navarro.

Navarro previously was set to team with Sinner but had to withdraw herself albeit more for her singles career than due to injury. She hasn't played great as of late and decided instead to play in singles in Monterrey and accrue more points than decide to play what is a bonafide exhibition. This despite Navarro doing a lot of the trash talking and buildup for her team before the tournament began.

It is an unfortunate situation and also a pretty crushing one for Siniakova who herself was given a lifeline to play in the event after she previously had choice words about her and Marcelo Arevalo who applied for a wildcard not getting a spot. “When two world No. 1s in doubles don’t get into the tournament, there’s probably nothing more to say about it,” Siniakova told Canal+.

“I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if I won’t get it, actually,” she said also to Tennis Channel. “I will just keep it like this.” She did with Sinner late on but in the end he had to withdraw after a pretty crushing retirement in the Cincinnati Open final where he looked out on his feet.

“I'm super, super sorry to disappoint you [but] from yesterday I didn't feel great,” Sinner told fans after his loss. “I thought that I would improve during the night, but I came up worse.

“I tried to come out, tried to make it at least a small match, but I couldn’t handle more, so I’m very sorry.” Albeit the writing was on the wall when he said he had a few days to recover. "I love Grand Slams a lot. This is the main, main tournaments for my season and for my career," Sinner said. "So US Open is going to be tough tournament, but in the same time, I'm looking forward to it. If I'm ready, physically and mentally, I will be ready to push. So as I said, now a couple of days of recovery, and then we get again back to work, and hopefully we'll be ready. So for sure, the main goal here in the US."

Top seeds Jack Draper/Jessica Pegula against Carlos Alcaraz/Emma Raducanu, and Olga Danilovic/Novak Djokovic against Mirra Andreeva/Daniil Medvedev are among the ties today. Elena Rybakina/Taylor Fritz have already lost to Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori.