“Tennis like never before”, it starts today!

A new format, 10 players and a single crown, the Ultimate Tennis Showdown begins this Sunday! After Saturday’s matches had been postponed, it will be the official kick-off of the competition. Patrick Mouratoglou’s new creation is looking extremely attractive with four top 10 players set to compete:

• Dominic Thiem “Domi” (who will not compete in the first two meetings)
• Stefanos Tsitsipas “The Greek God”
• Matteo Berrettini “The Hammer”
• David Goffin “The Wall”

These four men will be accompanied by creative cast of characters who certainly can challenge for the crown: Benoit Paire “The Rebel”, Lucas Pouille “The French Flair”, Richard Gasquet “The Virtuoso”, Feliciano Lopez “The Torero”, Alexei Popyrin “The Sniper” and Dustin Brown “The Magician”. These 10 players will compete for 5 consecutive weekends. The best six, those who have won the most games, will play a “Final Six” on the last Sunday to win the precious trophy. The top two in the standings will be directly qualified for the semi-finals.

A new, experimental format will be put into practice at the UTS. Forget the “classic” rules of tennis, the UTS parts ways with the old codes and focuses instead on innovation. Each match will last one hour maximum, with four 10-minute quarters and two minute changeovers between each quarter.

The change is now

During play, the players will be able to exchange with their coaches, at the change of ends or during time-outs of 30 seconds, which the coaches may take once per quarter.

UTS cards may also change the course of a match. Before each contest, each player will receive four “UTS cards”, which will either give him an advantage or handicap the opponent. Before each quarter, players must choose two cards from the four to be used during each quarter. A player cannot use two cards at the same time, or at the same time as the opponent. Each player will have an additional 20 seconds when using a UTS card. These cannot apply during sudden death. Ready ? Play!