Stefanos Tsitsipas, Matteo Berrettini and Alexei Popyrin have the early pacesetters in the Patrick Mouratoglou organised Ultimate Tennis Showdown in Nice.
Staged at Mouratoglou’s Tennis Academy, the event features a very different scoring system where matches are split into 10-minute quarters, with the winner of each quarter determined by who wins the most points in that span.
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Players aim to win three of the four quarters for an outright victory, but if quarters are split evenly, a tiebreak is required.
Players then play points until one player wins two consecutive points to be the winner.
World No. 6 Tsitsipas beat Benoit Paire 3-1 and world No.8 Matteo Berrettini beat Dustin Brown 3-1.
Australia’s Alexei Popyrin was the first winner at the new event, beating France’s Elliot Benchetrit 3-1.
Feliciano Lopez and Richard Gasquet also scored wins on the opening day.
