Nick Kyrgios will be back on the tennis courts again, and his comeback will happen at the 2024 Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) in New York.
It has been quite some time since the 29-year-old competed on the ATP Tour, as he last regularly played in 2022, before an injury-derailed 2023 season, when he played only one match, losing in the first round of the 2023 Stuttgart Open to Yibing Wu.
Since then, the 2022 Wimbledon finalist has been away from the tennis courts once again, and it took further 14 months for him to recover into a playing shape, and his comeback will happen in New York.
In the meantime, Kyrgios became a media personality, appearing on the Tennis Channel, commentating for Eurosport and ESPN, and also hosting his own podcast, 'Good Trouble with Nick Kyrgios'.
Now, it's time to get back on the courts for the Australian, and that comeback won't happen at an ATP or a Grand Slam tournament but instead at an exhibition event organized by renowned French coach Patrick Mouratoglou.
The Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) is very popular tournament among players, as it offers a completely different competition to what they are used to in a classic tennis scoring format.
The UTS is played in quarters instead of sets and games. Each quarter lasts eight minutes, and each point is worth 1 point won. After four quarters are played, the player with most quarters won wins the match, and in case of a tie, there is a sudden death decider played.
Earlier this year, there was already one UTS event played in Oslo, which saw Andrey Rublev beat Alex de Minaur in the final to take the trophy, and both of these players will compete also in New York.
That's the second UTS tournament of the year, running on August 22nd and 23rd, but this time, with a slightly different format. Previously, the UTS tournaments were played in a round robin format, with the first two in each group progressing to the semi-finals.
Now, it will be a more familiar format to the tennis fans, as it will be a classic draw with eight players, starting from the quarter-final stage, and it will include also Kyrgios, who confirmed his participation on social media.
"I want to inform anyone that keeps up with UTS, or is a tennis fan out there, that I will be competing on the 22nd August at the Forest Hills Stadium in New York. I know it’s been a long time. But my body’s finally ready to get back out there and have some fun."
The Australian will be one of the four unseeded players, and funnily enough, he will start against the second-seeded Casper Ruud, who he had some disagreements with before, but ahead of this matchup, the Australian seemed to be in a friendly mood with the Norwegian.
"I'll see if I am still able to go against some of the best players in the world starting off with my old rival, Casper Ruud. Casper, please take it easy on me. I can't wait to be out there competing in front of all the amazing fans hopefully I can still bring some life to the sport."
Players at the UTS have their own nicknames, so this will be a matchup between 'The Ice Man' and 'King Kyrgios'. Another matchup will see the first-seeded Alex de Minaur, known as 'The Demon', take on Denis Shapovalov, nicknamed 'Shapo'.
Champion form Oslo, Andrey 'Rublo' Rublev, will play against another participant from the UTS tournament in Oslo, Gael Monfils, known as 'La Monf', who is controversially discovered from the tournament, which prides itself in being an event without umpires and some traditional rules.
The fourth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas, with an interesting nickname 'El Greco' will play against Alexander Bublik, nicknamed 'The Bublik Enemy' in the last quarter-final match of the tournament.
The tournament promises many exciting matchups, and chance for the players to fine-tune their form ahead of the 2024 US Open. The full draw for the tournament can be seen below.
| Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|
| Alex de Minaur [1] | Denis Shapovalov |
| Gael Monfils | Andrey Rublev [3] |
| Stefanos Tsitsipas [4] | Alexander Bublik |
| Nick Kyrgios | Casper Ruud [2] |