Aurélie Sacchelli, Media365, published on Tuesday October 8, 2024 at 7:35 p.m.
The UTS, the exhibition created by Patrick Mouratoglou in 2020, will stop at the Arènes de Nîmes next April, with Gaël Monfils and Ugo Humbert on the program.
Built at the end of the 1st century to accommodate entertainment, the Arena of Nîmes still has the same function almost 2000 years later. They have already been the venue for several Davis Cup matches and handball matches in the 1990s, the world fencing championships in 2001, the archery world championships in 2003, and even against the – inaugural team watch of the Vuelta in 2017. And next year, tennis will make its big return to the Arena, during a stage of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, this exhibition competition created by Patrick Mouratoglou in 2020, after coming out of confinement. Since UTS1, UTS2 and UTS4, which took place in Biot (without an audience), the tournament had been exiled to the four corners of the world and had never returned to France. This will be done on Friday April 4 and Saturday April 5, on a clay court. Eight players will be present, and four have already confirmed their presence at this UTS, which will be held just before the start of the Masters 1000 in Monte-Carlo: the French n°1 Ugo Humbert, the veteran Gaël Monfils (winner of the UTS in New York this summer), the Norwegian Casper Ruud and the Russian Andrey Rublev (winner of UTS6 and 9 in Frankfurt and Oslo).
A million dollar endowment
The four other participants in this Nîmes UTS, worth one million dollars, will be announced by the end of the 2024 season. Another UTS will take place in 2025, in Guadalajara in Mexico in mid-February. “Thanks to the privileged relationship with tennis player Jérémy Chardy and, following constructive discussions with Patrick Mouratoglou’s teams, we were able to propose this ambitious tennis tournament project in Nîmes to the Mayor, Jean-Paul Fournier,” rejoiced Vincent Bastide, CEO of Bastide Médical, title partner of the event. Remember that the UTS competes with slightly different rules from the ATP circuit : four quarters of 8 minutes, the first player at three quarters wins the match (if it is 2-2, the players play a sudden death, where two consecutive points must be won), a single ball of service, 15 seconds between points, once per quarter, each player can trigger the “next point triple count” card.
