UTS summary: what works, what needs to be done, what can tennis learn from it? | TENNIS.com

The first edition of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) ended with, well, a pretty good showdown. The final, between Matteo Berrettini and Stefanos Tsitsipas, ended in a tiebreak with sudden death; in UTS means that the first player to win two straight points wins the match. Berrettini saved a champion point with a stretch volley winner, then won the title with a running forehand pass on the next point.

The crowd noise machine went wild.

UTS founder Patrick Mouratoglou could not have asked for a better conclusion to his five-week tennis disturbance experiment. Unfortunately, for much of that time, the event was overshadowed by two other ill-fated tennis exhibitions, in Croatia and Atlanta, where fans could attend and several players test positive for the corona virus. So we have to start praising UTS, which was held in a fan-free bubble at the Mouratoglous academy in Nice, France, for hosting a safe event.

How was UTS different? It started out shocking and intriguing to me. Thanks Mouratoglou for bravery. Instead of adjusting the tennis rules, he threw them out and started again. Timed quarters, coaching timeouts, mid-game interviews, opportunities to steal your opponents’ service and have your winners count for three points: Sometimes it felt like all that was left of traditional tennis was the net.

Diversity. Emotion. Modernity. That is Mouratoglous mantra for UTS. Those are three areas where he thinks tennis falls short today, and the three things he hoped his format could bring him back to court. Has he passed? It’s hard to make a judgment without seeing the response from fans, but here’s a look at what I thought worked, could use some work, and take some tennis off UTS.

Ultimate Tennis Showdown

What worked

1.A New way to connect with players. Overall, I thought the main UTS innovation was to get the players to help sell the event, rather than play it alone. Normally, the pros only focus on winning, which makes sense because that’s how they get paid. But it also means they object to doing anything else that could distract them during a match. Mouratoglou made it clear that they should talk to the commentators and their coaches about changeovers, and that they should do it in English. These would be deal-breaking demands on tour, but the players complied with UTS, and it made a difference.

Through these conversations, for example, we gained a better understanding of the nuances of Tsitsipass’s sometimes fleeting relationship with his father, Apostolos, who became a character in the drama on its own. We got to know the sympathetic Benoit Paire behind the maniac. We saw the softly spoken side of the colossal Berrettini. We learned that Corentin Moutet from France is a funny, irreverent man with a personality that should appeal to younger fans. We heard that David Goffin and his coach, Thomas Johansson discussed tactical and technical details that could be useful to any recreational player. Most memorable, and rude, we heard Richard Gasquet praise his countryman Paires’ lady-killing skills. He never misses, Gasquet said, shaking his head in surprise. Hey, we want them to express themselves, right?

These quick conversations were profound or revealing, but they added a new dimension to tennis by taking us to the field with the players.

Tsitsipas talks to commentators during the final:

2.A Increased sense of urgency. A 15-second serving clock; camera angles at ground level; Quarters of 10 minutes; incentives to hit winners; a scoring system where every point counts; games ending in an hour: the name of the UTS game is urgency. Mouratoglou believes that tennis is too slow for current consumption habits, especially among young people. He’s not wrong. UTS shortened the time players had to recover between points, which in turn encouraged them to end the rallies faster. Not for nothing was the champion, Berrettini, also the heaviest hitter.

As I said, initially the pace of play was shocking; even for repetitions, there was little time. But I got used to the brutality of UTS, the focus on the score rather than taking pictures. More importantly, my attention didn’t hesitate; there was no time to look away from the TV screen.

Berrettini apparently thought the same. After returning to another event at another event last week, he said, I found the game to be too slow. I thought, come on, serve.

3.Gimmicks that made a difference. Players are allowed to use UTS cards to disrupt the game for a short period of time. They are made to steal their opponents. Another ensures that their winners count three points. A third lets them take the first serve from their opponents.

At first these seemed a step too far and confusing to me. But they made the games more competitive and unpredictable and introduced tactical questions that are not normally part of the game. In the final, Berrettini and Tsitsipas each turned a quarter around with a well-timed, three-point winner. It was also interesting to see how much risk they took in those situations and how much risk they took if they had only served once.

Ultimate Tennis Showdown

What could use work

1. There is Little Time to Emote. Mouratoglou wanted to see emotion, see the players express, see how they crushed their rackets, and bring back the badboy days of the 1980s he so fondly remembers. But apart from a few Paire meltdowns, I didn’t see a lot of extracurricular emoting. That’s probably because there was no time for it. As the 15 second clock counted down continuously, the players had no choice but to proceed to the next point. Berrettini even mentioned that as one of the things he liked about UTS: You don’t have time to blame yourself, he said.

I personally didn’t mind that the players stopped trading. Anyway, I thought the switch chats with the commentators were a better form of self-expression than a racket smash.

2.Scoreline comes for Shotmaking. When I watched UTS it became clear to me, in a way it has never before, how much emphasis we put on making shots in traditional tennis. Tennis fans, much more than team sports fans, live for artistic shots and TV networks like to play them over and over. In UTS there was no time to enjoy the art of the game; here the focus was on strength rather than finesse. UTS chose to always use a ground-level camera angle, rather than the elevated angle we usually see. This view conveyed the urgency of the points, but it did not reveal the artistry of the shots, or the tactics used in the rallies. UTS is all about the score and the competition, which is a good way to keep viewers on the screen, which I found attractive for the most part. It was also interesting to see that a player like Gasquet, whose UTS nickname is The Artist, became a more powerful, offensive competitor and used more of his net game. At the age of 34 he reached the semi-finals.

Diversity is one of the pillars of UTS. By this Mouratoglou means a diversity of playing styles; he hoped to see more net rushing and more serve and volley. And there was some of that. But most of the time we saw what we see on tour: Big-serve, big-forehand tennis.

I like that playing style and I like fast moving competition. But I also enjoy the playing arts. Perhaps next time, UTS can alternate camera angles to show more of the track from above and boost net rush with a UTS card that awards more points to volley winners.

Ultimate Tennis Showdown

What can UTS tennis do for you?

Both tours should consider mandating in-match interviews and establishing headset coaching. The TV networks want it and UTS shows why. (I wouldn’t argue in favor of these changes at the Grand Slams, though.) Both tours should also consider moving to 20-second clocks. A team league such as the ATP Cup might also consider the UTS format, which promotes team sports energy.

The best option, of course, would be for UTS to succeed as an alternative format like Twenty-20 cricket that fits comfortably in a two-hour TV window at night, and would be played by men and women. Of course, this is still a long way off, and it is not clear now whether the players want to be part of something like UTS when the coronavirus crisis is over, or whether fans want to watch it. But modernity is the third pillar of UTS, and in that sense it succeeds: it feels modern, and that is a big step forward for tennis.

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