Ultimate Tennis Showdown: Card Games in the Academy
The first day of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown brought what organizer Patrick Mouratoglou had hoped for: entertaining and sometimes pretty good tennis.
by tennisnet.com
last edit: Jun 15, 2020, 07:49 am
How the pictures differ: While the stands in Novak Djokovic's Adria Tour in Belgrade were full of fans throughout the weekend, on the first day of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) at the Academy of Patrick Mouratoglou near Nice was excluded played to the public, most of the few attendants present (and probably those training at the academy) also wore mouth-nose protectors. Actually, it should have started on Saturday, the rain thwarted Mouratoglou and Co.
There, in Belgrade, there was magic on sand, not according to the regular ATP rules, but in the "Fast-4" format that had already been tried and tested in the #NextGen finals and other exhibition fights. Mouratoglou, on the other hand, wants to reinvent nothing less than tennis. And seems to be on the right track with the individual elements that come into play at UTS. This begins with the form of the game, after which an encounter is played in four quarters of ten minutes each - somewhat similar to the formats known in Germany as the "loop" tournament, in Austria as the "Mascherl" tournament.
One Lopez coaches the other
If you score more points in these ten minutes, you win the quarter, if it is a tie after the time has elapsed, a sudden death is decided. A section can therefore end at 22: 5 (as with Matteo Berrettini against Dustin Brown), or just 13:12 (as in several matches).
The player who wins more fourths wins the match. On the first day it was Richard Gasquet against David Goffin or Berrettini against Brown, in the night session "The Greek God" Stefanos Tsitsipas against "The Rebel" Benoit Paire. Because this is also a facet of the UTS: All players have been given an artist, if not fight name.
Because this is obviously too clear, the team around star coach Mouratoglou came up with something else, check that, a few other things: So the supervisors (in the case of Oldie Feliciano Lopez, from left "The Torero", that was it namesake Marc Lopez, unrelated, not related) take a coaching timeout for each stage of the game - but the players themselves can refuse to do so. After the conversations take place by telephone via the headset, the TV viewers can also participate in the exchange.
Maps as a tactical tool
And then there are the different trump cards that have to be played: If, for example, the card “X3” is played, a winning stroke counts three points. With "Steal Serve" a player gets four serves in a row (usually the players alternate with the serve after two points); "-1 Serve" means that the opponent has only one serve left. And finally "Win in 3 Shots Max" - which means that the opponent must have won the point in three or fewer shots. The latter is anchored in the DNA for hard hitters like Berrettini (but now: "The Hammer") or serve volley players like Lopez and Brown - David Goffin, on the other hand, builds up his points rather carefully.
When exactly it is the greatest advantage to play a card is one of the main tasks of the participants, which will be expanded by a prominent guest next weekend: Dominic Thiem (attention: for him only "Domi" was left in the name reservoir) draw the direct comparison between Belgrade, where he prevailed in the Blitz tournament there in the final against Filip Krajinovic, and the card games in Nice.