Rajeev Ram's Career Ends as Krawietz and Puetz Reach US Open Final
Rajeev Ram’s glittering career ended not on Arthur Ashe in a showpiece final, but under the lights of Louis Armstrong Stadium, where so many of his and Joe Salisbury’s best battles had unfolded. The result was not the fairytale finish they wanted. The setting, he insisted, was perfect.
Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz were in no mood for sentiment. The German pair were clinical in a 6-3, 6-4 victory that stopped Salisbury from reaching a fifth US Open men’s doubles final in six years and closed the book on one of the great modern partnerships.
Ram and Salisbury walk away with four Grand Slam titles together and a slice of history that will take some shifting: from 2021 to 2023 they became the only team ever to win the US Open men’s doubles three years in a row. In New York, they were a dynasty.
This time, the run ended in the semi-finals.
Ram, who had announced this would be his final season, absorbed the defeat with the perspective of a man who knows what he and his partner have built.
“Honestly, it couldn't be better,” he said afterwards, reflecting not on the scoreline but on the stage. “I know we've won the title and we've played on Ashe and for the final, but we've had some of our absolute most epic matches on that court, at Louis Armstrong.
“So first of all, it's at this tournament, it’s on that court. Joe was there. If you saw the poster that they made, more than half the pictures had him in it. So the whole thing, to me, it couldn't have been any better.”
There was a symmetry to it. The team that had owned Flushing Meadows for three straight years signing off in the arena that had framed so many of their defining moments.
But the story of this US Open now moves on without them.
Skupski and Harrison vs Krawietz and Puetz: a final with contrasting stories
Waiting in the final are two teams at very different stages of their journeys.
On one side, Neal Skupski and Lloyd Harrison, a British-American pairing still in their first season together, already moving at breakneck speed. They arrive in Saturday’s showpiece as Australian Open champions, having captured that title in just their second tournament as a team. Chemistry, it seems, came instantly.
On the other, Krawietz and Puetz, the fifth seeds and 2024 ATP Finals champions, a seasoned partnership that has long threatened to crack the Grand Slam code but is still searching for that first major trophy together. They know this stage. They reached the US Open final in 2024, only to fall to Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson. The scar tissue is there. So is the motivation.
The final will be their second meeting. The Germans edged the first, in Adelaide, 6-3, 2-6, 10-5, a match that underlined how small the margins are at the top of men’s doubles. Skupski and Harrison have grown since then, hardened by a major title and a season of big matches. Krawietz and Puetz have grown too, adding the ATP Finals crown to their résumé and sharpening their understanding point by point.
On Saturday 12 September, those trajectories collide.
Skupski and Harrison chase a second Grand Slam of the season and the chance to stamp themselves as the new standard-bearers of men’s doubles. Krawietz and Puetz hunt the prize that has eluded them, the one line missing from an otherwise imposing record.
Ram and Salisbury once owned this court and this tournament. Now the question is simple: who takes their place at the top of New York’s doubles throne?
