Things escalated quickly between Stefanos Tsitsipas and Corentin Moutet late in their compelling battle at the Ultimate Tennis Showdown. With Tsitsipas—aka the Greek God—engineering yet another late comeback Moutet was feeling the pressure and let his temper overflow.
Watch below as he calls out Tsitsipas’ coach and father Apostolos and then proceeds to get into a heated argument with Tsitsipas.
The battle of words took precedent momentarily over the fantastic tennis that was being played. Eventually order was restored and Tsitsipas took the victory in sudden death to improve to 7-1 at the UTS.
“Nothing against Stefanos, he’s a great guy, but his father is stupid,” said Moutet during an on-court interview after the fourth quarter.
Moutet had begun to be irritated when Tsitsipas got coaching advice from his dad earlier in the match. The problem is, all coaching is completely legal at the UTS.
That didn’t stop Moutet from continuing to jab at the World No.6’s father. To his credit the Greek did what he normally does. Stayed focused and pulled out another thriller.
Patrick Mouratoglou has made it clear that he wants emotions with his new event, which features four ten-minute quarters and sudden death if players are tied after two. Headset interviews after every quarter and coaching timeouts tend to add to the drama.
Players don’t receive code violations in UTS so they are free to throw racquets and crush balls out of the court, and it tends to make them a little crazy.
Today it made Moutet crazy, but Tsitsipas, not so much.