Alex de Minaur has pocketed one of the biggest pay-days of his best-ever season, scooping nearly $1 million for successfully defending his title in the innovative Ultimate Tennis Showdown grand final in London.
The world No.7 may be striving to make his ultimate breakthrough in traditional tennis, but he's become the master of the UTS format, a truncated, fast-paced version of the game played amid a noisy, floodlit rock 'n' roll backdrop unashamedly designed to woo a more youthful audience.
Having won the event at London's Copper Box Arena this time last year, the Australian No.1 ended his 2025 program by defeating world No.12 Casper Ruud in Sunday's final.
Victory earned him $US640,000 - a $US390,000 winner's cheque and a $US250,000 bonus for having played an earlier UTS event in France - which all equated to a whopping $A964,000 pre-Christmas present.
That wasn't much less than "Demon'' earned for reaching the recent ATP Finals semis ($US727,500), and was actually more than the $US420,000 for winning his only ATP title of the year in Washington.
Now popular in Britain, as fiance of local tennis star Katie Boulter, de Minaur was again cheered at his "second home" in the latest of the UTS events founded by coaching guru Patrick Mouratoglou and Alex Popyrin, the businessman dad of Aussie star Alexei.
Featuring shorter matches played on a pure singles courts over four eight-minute quarters and including unique rules like just one serve per point and sudden-death points, de Minaur has now won three UTS events over the format's five-year history.
"It's amazing to win here again," he said. "London is a special place for me, and my home now.''
The eight-player tournament ended with the highest-ranked duo meeting in the final, with de Minaur, who beat French star Ugo Humbert 3-0 in the semis, eclipsing Norway's three-time grand slam finalist Ruud 3-1 (11-15, 15-10, 15-11, 16-7).
De Minaur's victory came on the eve of the annual Australian tennis awards in Melbourne, where he is an unbackable favourite to win a fourth Newcombe Medal on Monday night.
But the tireless de Minaur reckoned: "There's no rest for me. I might take Monday off, but then it's back on court practising for the new season."
