Nick Kyrgios and Kwon Soon-woo to compete in 'fast and furious' UTS tournament in Goyang

China's Wu Yibing returns between his legs against the United States' Taylor Fritz during the finals of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown in July in Carson, Calif. [AP/YONHAP]

Tennis fans in Korea will have a chance to watch some their favorite professional players on home turf before the year’s end after all.

The Korea leg of the international “Ultimate Tennis Showdown” — an individual men's tennis league founded by a big-name French coach in 2020 — is officially a month away as the star-studded tournament next comes to Seoul.

Or rather, players will head to Goyang, Gyeonggi for the competition, the third of four UTS events this season. It’s the first time the young tournament will hold an event in Asia, and Korea is the league’s last stop before London hosts the “Grand Final” in December.

The non-traditional tennis tournament brings the men’s game back to Korea, which has rarely seen the highest-level of the game. Korea was not a stop on the top-tier men’s Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour this season, and the last time Korea hosted a tournament was last September, the ATP’s first time back in Korea since 1996.

The women’s pro-tennis organization, the WTA, has been a more recent guest. American tennis player Jessica Pegula, whose mother was born in Korea, won the Hana Bank Korea Open at southern Seoul’s Olympic Park in September.

Jessica Pegula wins 2023 Hana Bank Korea Open

Eight players are set to take part in what UTS bills as “reimagined” tennis with “fast and furious rules” — no warm-ups, no lets, at one point sudden death — over a three-day contest planned for Dec. 1 to 3.

Korea is no stranger to all-star sports, but the country has advertised a small handful of similar events that have been canceled at the last minute this year.

An all-star game featuring star footballers from Brazil, Italy and Korea was scheduled to take place in Goyang earlier in October, but local promoters announced that it would be canceled a week before it was set to begin.

And European football club Wolverhampton Wanderers, alongside Roma and Celtic, canceled a preseason “Korea Tour” after they said local organizers failed to meet their end of the contractual deal.

But if all goes well, some of the tennis greats could have a new arena to fight for a comeback. Among those locked in are Korea’s Kwon Soon-woo, the first Korean tennis player to win more than one ATP title, who has returned to competing after a shoulder injury, along with Australia’s Nick Kyrgios, a former Wimbledon finalist who has sat out all but one ATP tournament during the 2023 season due to January knee surgery and a wrist injury that followed.

Also coming to Korea are France’s Gael Monfils and Richard Gasquet, Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik, Canada’s Milos Raonic, Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff and the United States’ Reilly Opelka.

The UTS, founded by Patrick Mouratoglou, who formerly coached American tennis player Serena Williams, has given each of its stars a nickname. Meet Kwon “The Machine” Soon-woo and “King Kyrgios.” Milos “The Missile” Raonic. And so on.

Round Robin matches are set to begin on Dec. 1.

BY MARY YANG [mary.yang@joongang.co.kr]