By Richard Pagliaro | Tuesday, August 9, 2016
Rafael Nadal and Garbine Muguruza are seeded third in the Rio Olympics mixed doubles draw.
Photo credit: Mutua Madrid Open
Spanish flag bearer Rafael Nadal is tripling his Olympic effort.
The nine-time French Open champion will join forces with reigning Roland Garros champion Garbine Muguruza mixed doubles dream team. The Spanish pair open against the Czech Republic's Lucie Hradecká and Radek Štěpánek.
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"Who wouldn't want to play with Rafa?" Muguruza said prior to the Olympics.
The partnership may well take on added significance for Muguruza after the third seed suffered a shocking 6-1, 6-1, singles loss to Puerto Rico's Monica Puig today.
The draw for the 16-team Olympic mixed doubles event was conducted today. Nadal and Muguruza are seeded third.
The fifth-ranked Nadal and 12th-ranked compatriot David Ferrer, who is partnering Carla Suarez Navarro, are the highest-ranked men in the mixed field.
World No. 2 Andy Murray, who teamed with Laura Robson to win the silver mixed doubles medal at the 2012 London Games, was poised to play with Wimbledon mixed doubles champion Heather Watson in Rio. However their combined ranking was too low to make the cut-off making the British pair second alternates for the draw.
France boasts the top two mixed doubles seeds.
Caroline Garcia will partner world No. 2 doubles player Pierre-Hugues Herbert. The top-seeded pair open against Brazil's Teliana Pereira and former doubles No. 1 Marcelo Melo.
No. 2 seeded Kristina Mladenovic teams with doubles world No. 1 Nicolas Mahut in a challenging opening-round assignment against Italy's Roberta Vinci, a former doubles world No. 1, and 2015 Australian Open doubles champion Fabio Fognini. Vinci was in the wedding party when Fognini married US Open champion Flavia Pennetta in June.
Garcia and Mladenovic won the Roland Garros doubles crown in June; Herbert and Mahut raised the Wimbledon doubles title trophy last month.
An accomplished mixed doubles player, Mladenovic partnered Canadian Daniel Nestor to win the 2013 Wimbledon and 2014 Australian Open mixed doubles crowns.
India's Sania Mirza, the 2014 US Open mixed doubles champion with Brazilian Bruno Soares, and compatriot Rohan Bopanna are seeded fourth. They will play the Australian team of Samantha Stosur and John Peers in round one.
Mirza chose to partner Bopanna rather than veteran Leander Paes, who won three of the four mixed doubles majors with Martina Hingis last year before capturing Roland Garros in June to complete a career mixed doubles Grand Slam together.
Hall of Famer Hingis hoped to reprise her mixed doubles partnership with 17-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer, but the former No. 1 closed the curtain on his season to rehab his surgically-repaired knee.
Venus Williams modeled her serve on Pete Sampras, so it's fitting the four-time Olympic gold-medal champion is teaming with Rajeev Ram, who's nicknamed "Rampras" for the similarity of his service motion to Sampras.
The Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jack Sock team features a pair of former Grand Slam mixed champions. Sock and compatriot Melanie Oudin won the 2011 US Open; Mattek-Sands and Mike Bryan, who skipped Rio, teamed to win the 2015 Roland Garros.
Mattek-Sands and Sock face a tough opener against Britain's Johanna Konta and Jamie Murray.
Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska and Lukasz Kubot could also be a formidable team in the field.
Nadal, who defeated Federico Delbonis in his Rio opener that was his first singles match in 73 days, adds mixed to his busy Rio schedule that includes singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
Nadal and buddy Marc Lopez, the reigning French Open doubles champion, defeated Argentina's Juan Martin del Potro and Maximo Gonzalez, 6-3, 5-7, 6-2, to reach the doubles quarterfinals.
The mixed doubles tournament begins tomorrow.
Belarus' Victoria Azarenka and Max Mirnyi won the 2012 Olympic mixed doubles gold medal. The pair are not playing this year as Azarenka is pregnant and expecting her first child later this year.