Patrick Mouratoglou, founder of UTS (and co-founder of Tennis Majors) was more than happy to see his vision accomplished at Los Angeles, during the first UTS played in front of a crowd.
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00:00 When you decide to do that job, to be a tennis player,
00:02 it's the same as if you decide to be an artist.
00:04 You are performing in front of thousands of people,
00:08 if you are a great athlete or a great singer,
00:10 less if you're not,
00:11 but you are performing in front of people.
00:13 That's your job.
00:15 So what you love is to impress people,
00:18 connect with people, share emotion with people.
00:21 So UTS is the platform for that.
00:23 What we did was giving the space for things to happen,
00:27 giving the space to the crowd,
00:29 allowing them to express fully
00:31 and giving the space to the players,
00:34 allowing them to be fully themselves
00:35 and do whatever they wanted because it's their place.
00:38 The tennis court is their place
00:41 and I believe it should be their place
00:43 and we shouldn't take this away from them
00:45 by telling them what they should do
00:47 and how they should behave.
00:48 When there is a silence and you hear a sound,
00:51 imagine you're at home, it's full silence
00:54 and you hear a sound, not even a big sound,
00:56 but boom, you're gonna jump
00:59 because you're surprised, you don't expect it.
01:01 That's tennis.
01:02 The silence during the points in tennis
01:04 makes it scary when there is suddenly a noise.
01:08 When you have a constant noise, it's not a problem,
01:11 not a problem at all.
01:12 And we had constant noise, there was music all the time.
01:14 - Contest.
01:15 (crowd cheering)
01:18 - Of course, when they were playing,
01:19 the music was lower, but there was music.
01:21 The people were talking, shouting,
01:23 sometimes teasing the players.
01:24 You had this all the time.
01:25 So it's not a problem at all.
01:27 (crowd cheering)
01:29 - I love this idea.
01:31 The format itself, I fucking love it.
01:33 It's so fun, man.
01:34 Like, we play a point, there's music going,
01:35 like you feel, you always feel into it.
01:37 - Yeah, and the players knew in advance
01:39 it would be like this, they were prepared for that.
01:41 And I'm sure if you ask them today,
01:43 they will say it was no problem.
01:45 And it's not more than that.
01:46 They will say, it was cool, we liked it.
01:49 We felt that they were into it.
01:52 The bases of UTS are set for the first time
01:56 with the crowd today.