By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday May 7, 2021
UTS is back! The Ultimate Tennis Showdown, the brainchild of Patrick Mouratoglou, will return for a fourth edition on May 25-26, with several top players announcing their commitment on Friday.
The event has nabbed two Top 10 players and several other big names to boot. World No.3 Daniil Medvedev, World No.9 Diego Schwartzman, 28th-ranked Fabio Fognini, 44th-ranked Alexander Bublik and 67th-ranked Corentin Moutet will all compete.
All of UTS4’s matches will be streamed live for free on https://watch.utslive.tv.
The Ultimate Tennis Showdown is a unique event that features a brand new scoring system, four 10-minute quarters, and televised on-court interviews with the players after each quarter. Mouratoglou, the event’s co-founder, wants the event to appeal to a younger, social media savvy audience and has thrown the tennis’ code of conduct out the window so that his players can be free to emote however they like.
The format created some memorable events in the first three editions. Trick shots, hot tempers and sudden death keep the atmosphere bubbling.
The event will be held on clay for the first time ever. The previous three events were held in 2020 with Italy’s Matteo Berrettini taking the inaugural UTS1 crown at the Patrick Mouratoglou Tennis Academy last summer. UTS2 featured a women’s draw for the first time, with Alexander Zverev and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova taking home the event’s signature thunderbolt trophy.
UTS3 was held in conjunction with the European Open in Antwerp—Alex de Minaur brought home the thunderbolt.
Three more players will be added to the UTS4 roster in the coming weeks.