Patrick Mouratoglou on New Initiative, the Ultimate Tennis Showdown
On this week's episode of Beyond the Baseline, host Jon Wertheim talks with Patrick Mouratoglou, coach of Serena Williams and the mind behind the new Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS), a round-robin tournament that will be played at Mouratoglou's tennis academy on the French Riviera over the summer. Mouratoglou discusses why he believes it is important to create a faster-paced game that is more appealing to young fans; why he hopes the format will encourage players to show more emotion; what he is advising Serena to do for the 2020 U.S. Open and much more.
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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Jon Wertheim: What's the objective of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown? Why'd you do this?
Patrick Mouratoglou: I do this because I feel that tennis needs to reinvent itself. I know when I say that it sounds a bit too much, but I'll explain why. The tennis fans are getting older. The fan base is getting older. Nothing against old people, but at a certain point, any fan base has to be renewed. If it's not renewed, people are getting older and older and at some point, it's not gonna work anymore. And when your fan base is 61 years old and gets one year older every year, you have to start to worry and try to find solutions. So I try to understand why we're in this situation. I realize that, first of all. People feel that it was better before. And that's what I hear every day, and you probably hear the same.
By the way, people tell me this every day: It was better before. OK, so I ask why. And they say because we had better personalities before. And I think that it's not true. I think we have great personalities in tennis, but I think they don't dare anymore expressing their emotions and expressing who they are. It's all about being politically correct all the time. So it's not very fun for the new fans, not very appealing. And we got rid of a lot of diversity—diversity of game styles, diversity with the young players, very young women being in Grand Slam finals that we don't have anymore because of rules. All this is because of rules that have been put in place, rules to prevent young players to reach the finals of a Grand Slams. The uniformization of the surfaces and the code of conduct, which is rules also, that get rid of the diversity of the personalities on court. And the personalities are very polished now and I think it affects the show. The game of tennis is incredible. The show of tennis, I think, is very old fashioned.
And the goal is to bring the best from the best. And also to be more modern in the way to showcase tennis, taking into consideration how people consume videos and sports and anything today.
JW: To what extent are you differentiating between when the ball is in play and when it's not? Because I'm looking out there and I'm seeing a 16-year-old girl addressing a crowd about an issue having nothing to do with tennis. And I see a 39-year-old man is going to get knee surgery, but continue playing in 2021. And I see a much more racially diverse and nationally diverse sport than I did 20 years ago. I push back on some of that. But I think your point when the ball's in play, I think is a much different situation. When did we lose these fans?
PM: First of all, I think the game is extremely slow. I think a tennis match is a marathon. You have to sit down and have food for the next three hours, if not more. And to ask a 15 or 20 or even 25 or 30-year-old to do that, this is not gonna happen. So that's a big problem. This is about the format. And more than that, it's long. Plus, it's very boring for a non-fan. For a fan it's fine because the game in itself is enough. For me, I'm fine. I can watch three hours match and I'm happy. But for someone who is not a tennis fan, you have to realize that the time that people don't play is much longer than the time when people play and when they don't play, they're basically doing this with the towel. They're bouncing the ball. They're choosing the ball. I mean, nothing's happening. This lasts so long. People wait all the time. Sometimes there is no break for almost a set. So nothing's happening. And the players are flat. Their behaviors, they all behave the same. There are a few exceptions, but aside a few exceptions, most of them behave the same all the time. And they don't give anything, no emotions, nothing. So for a non-fan honestly today—and I don't even talk about how complicated it is scoring, how complicated is the ranking system—it's almost a no-go 20 times before they get into tennis. So that's exactly the goal of UTS. Get rid of all those no-go's. Create a format that is much faster dynamic and surprising, because that's how people consume videos and formats today.
