‘Here all day to play thirty minutes’ said Andrey Rublev after semi-final defeat to Caspar Ruud at the Grand Final of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS).
Alex De Minaur won his third UTS Grand Final title at the Copper Box Arena this Sunday, but what actually is the Ultimate Tennis Showdown?
It’s T20 Tennis. Four quarters of eight minutes. Started in 2020 by coaching ace Patrick Mouratoglou. The players go by nicknames.
Played in a round robin format before semi-finals and a final, a massive payday awaits the winner.
Points go up one, two, three rather than 0,15,30,40. There’s a bonus button players can press once a quarter and, if they win the following point, they get three points rather than one. Still following?
Players generally kept to the PR lines. David Goffin lauded the innovative format as having a ‘high level of organisation’.
The Belgian clearly was not listening to the erratic music, which hastily faded between points, often still playing two shots into the rally.
Norwegian ace Ruud said: “It’s different on the eye but I think it’s fun.”
Andrey Rublev thought the 32 minute game was the perfect fit because the world number 16 just ‘isn’t that kind of guy’ to spend hours analysing and critiquing every point.
The Russian is using UTS as part of a pre-season training block ahead of a busy January.
Although his competitive spirit always remained on show, Rublev freely admitted: ‘It is definitely easier to get over than an ATP loss.’
It is £8 a pint, which in the grand scheme of sports event is not horrendous, not if you are comparing it with the $23 Honey Deuces at the US Open.
But the crowd is no more diverse than a typical tennis crowd. They are, after all, selling hummus and carrot sticks.
At around £40 for the cheapest tickets on the weekends, it is an economical alternative to crossing the road and spending £80 at the London Stadium, but not cheap enough to motivate non-tennis watchers to head over to East London.
The spectators I interviewed were already tennis fans, middle-class, and generally from the home counties.
The security guards thought it was interesting. They wouldn’t have ordinarily engaged with tennis but it seemed ‘alright’.
VIP tickets soar to £720. Did you know you can pay to play on the court? With or without Patrick Mouratoglou – your choice.
Maybe I’m old and grumpy when I question the necessity of UTS crammed into an already exhausted tennis calendar. Maybe I’m right.
David Goffin, for example, looked dead on his feet in his defeat to Francisco Cerundolo, and did not even raise a smile when asked about his birthday the day after.
On Sunday, Ugo Humbert was pinned to the baseline, and didn’t have the impetus to come to the net and challenge eventual winner De Minaur.
Humbert attributed his lacklustre performance to fatigue caused by the ‘intensity of the format’.
He said: “It was a difficult day. Alex was better than me.”
To give the athletes credit, their play is as fast as the gimmicks. It helps when you only have 15 seconds between each point.
De Minaur and Rublev’s late afternoon duel on Saturday was notable as was the Russian’s match against Adrian Mannarino in the evening session. Rublev won the first. And then the second in thrilling fashion.
The Russian is the perfect candidate to sell UTS. He mock smashes the bonus button into a million pieces, eggs on the crowd, and backs up the ego with seriously good comeback wins.
He did spend more time watching the Ruud/Humbert match on the big screen in the media room than answering questions but who is splitting hairs? Rublev was certainly the performer of the day until the Humbert v Ruud match.
Calls of Ruuuuuuud made me check that we were still in the Copper Box and not watching The Ashes in Brisbane – when there was still hope and Joe Roooooot was busy being brilliant.
But back to the tennis. Ruud won a tiebreak against the Frenchman to ensure their places in the next day’s semi-finals.
Come finals day, the crowd was sparser – perhaps rain-affected play? Or maybe many partook in the Jack Draper flake-out.
In the first semi-final, Humbert looked a shadow of the player he’d been on Saturday. Consistently hitting long on the right gave De Minaur the initiative. The Aussie grabbed it with both hands – making it 2-1 to the Aussies on the day’s diaspora of sports. Onya, Lando.
Ruud defeated Rublev in the second semi-final. Ranked twelfth in the world, Ruud kept up his form in the final’s first quarter, taking a 1-0 lead before De Minaur motored pass the Norwegian and won the next three quarters.
Ranked seventh in the world, De Minaur took home $640,000 USD ($390k+$250k bonus for UTS Nimes).
The tennis itself seemed to pale in comparison to the quarter time crowd games, the DJ, and the emojis that persistently popped up on the advertising boards.
When I asked spectators if they would return to watch another Ultimate Tennis Showdown, the answer was an overwhelming ‘no’.
Featured image credit: UTS.
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