Dominic Thiem, a three-time Grand Slam finalist and the No. 3-ranked player in the ATP, has stepped in to headline the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, a 10-man round-robin-style tournament beginning on Saturday in the south of France at the Mouratoglou Academy.
'With Dominic now, we have four of the top 10 ATP players in participation," Patrick Mouratoglou, proprietor of the academy and coach of Serena Williams, told ESPN.com on Thursday. Thiem will not play his first UTS match until June 20, due to a scheduling conflict this weekend.
Thiem was the runner-up to Rafael Nadal in the last two French Open finals. He was beaten by Novak Djokovic in this year's Australian Open final, the last Grand Slam event played before the coronavirus shut down the game.
"We hope more top guys will be interested over time," Mouratoglou added. "This will be a different tennis -- faster, more dynamic, with more emotions, and more interactions."
Mouratoglou, who is also an ESPN analyst, revealed final details of the event in a news conference later in the day. The tournament will be played over five consecutive weekends, with 10 "showdown" matches each weekend. There will be no spectators on site, due to the pandemic. The event will be streamed to subscribers via the UTS website.
The UTS innovations include a complex scoring system based on points accumulated by the players in the course of four 10-minute quarters, the server alternating after every two points. The players will be issued a limited number of Monopoly-like UTS "cards" that, when played,will enhance the value of the subsequent point or restrict an opponent to one serve.
Each player is allowed one 30-second coaching timeout during each quarter, taken by the coach using a buzzer. The players will confer with their coaches via headset, with viewers listening in. They also will answer questions from an interviewer during changeovers. Instead of having to observe a rigorous code of conduct, players are encouraged to express their emotions in ways forbidden by the ATP Tour (that includes racket-tossing and even trash-talking an opponent).
"All their lives players have been told to be careful of what they say and do for all kinds of reasons," said Mouratoglou, who has crusaded for some time now for a liberalization of rules governing conduct. "I want them to feel that they're free, to a limit, of course. It will be interesting to see how they feel being free this way."
There will even be canned crowd noise, much like the laugh tracks like those used in television sitcoms and game shows. But one thing there will not be is women. Mouratoglou said that trying to simultaneously create a womens' event was too challenging a task, given the 10-player, multi-week scope of the event, and the time and space constraints in play.
"When I told Serena what I was doing, her first reaction was, 'What? Patrick you cannot do this without women,'" Mouratoglou said. "I told her I understand, but I have no other option. She gave me very good advice and ideas. I think she really likes this concept."