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.
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.
