Biot (France) (AFP)
The Sniper shot the Outsider, the Artist was flattened by the Hammer, they played bonus cards, discussed with their coaches and commentators ... but the pretty points were rare: the tennis of the future imagined by Patrick Mouratoglou produced more shows than beautiful games on Sunday in Biot near Nice.
Played behind closed doors, the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) aims to capture a young audience who do not necessarily know tennis but who is addicted to screens, using the codes of e-sport and short formats broadcast on internet platforms. Ultimately, Mouratoglou hopes to make it a "2nd tennis league", in parallel with the ATP professional circuit with which he says he does not want to compete.
Whether the format continues or not, Alexei Popyrin, known as the Sniper at UTS, will forever be the first winner of a Mouratoglou-style tennis match.
The Australian (103rd in the world) won three of the four quarters of his duel against the French Elliot Benchetrit (208th).
The players used their bonus cards well (four services in a row instead of two, imposing a single service ball on the opponent, for example), a little less their freedom of expression. For their part, the spectators on their screens were treated to a visual and aural dress sometimes pulled by the hair, in particular on the part of commentators who became animators ... lack of spectacle and sporting intensity.
- Sell the product -
"Whether he's playing a card or talking to his coach, but we want him to do something." "He is getting angry, something is going to happen, the volcano is going to erupt". Then after the Benchetrit racket throw the Outsider: "We can see that he is not happy". In windows embedded on the screen, the commentators hired by the organization try to sell the product as best they can.
On the court, not much noticeable happens: the points succeed one another, the seconds spread out (the principle is to score the most points in a given time), the tactics of play gave way to the strategy of the cards, but the soufflé doesn't really go up.
There was, however, a great expectation of seeing tennis matches between very high level players after three months of freezing of the pro circuit due to pandemic.
Big names responded positively to Mouratoglou's call: Dominic Thiem (3rd world, replaced for this first weekend by Benchetrit), Stefanos Tsitsipas (6th), Matteo Berrettini (8th), David Goffin (10th), Benoît Paire (22nd ), Richard Gasquet (50th), Lucas Pouille (58th), Feliciano Lopez (56th), Dustin Brown (239th) and Popyrin. All were chosen by the organization for their talent, their personality, their style of play and their availability.
- Scoring -
They will compete over five consecutive weekends at the rate of 10 games per weekend, with a championship phase then a knockout table. All while being exempt from the code of conduct, the public, the media, traditions, authorities and even certain rules, starting with how to count the points.
But if players can find an interesting way to gradually recover from the competition, while the circuit is frozen until the end of July at least ("You will not find a player ready to play five sets," said Gasquet AFP Friday), tennis fans, deemed "traditionalists" by Mouratoglou, will not find their account.
"What if you were doing a spoonful service?" Proposed a "commentator" to Brown the Artist during a change of side during his match against Berrettini the Hammer. "No, it's not my thing," retorted the German before adding, as if to apologize "I will try to make things a little more interesting".
The future of UTS depends on the number of paid subscriptions on the internet platform (10 to 12 euros depending on the geographic area), the only media to broadcast it in full. Mouratoglou estimates that 50,000 subscribers would be a success.
© 2020 AFP