French player Gael Monfils was disqualified from the Ultimate Tennis Showdown in Oslo following an alleged playful scuffle with an official that resulted in the injury.
Lucas Pouille took over for Monfils after the latter’s behavior toward the tournament supervisor resulted in a code of conduct violation.
Patrick Mouratoglou, the founder and chairman of UTS, provided an additional explanation of the incident and the reasons behind Monfils disqualification after it happened.
Mouratoglou explained, responding to queries about how Monfils was disqualified: “Yes, there is a loosened code of conduct. The point is to let the players express themselves much more and feel freer on the court, share with the crowd, and maybe tackle their opponent verbally. That’s one of the concepts of UTS. But even when the code of conduct is loosened, there are rules and there have to be limits, and unfortunately, the limits were crossed by Gael. He didn’t mean anything bad but sometimes you don’t mean anything bad and you do things that you have to pay the price for.”
He further added: “It’s unfortunate; we love Gael, I love Gael, and I have known Gael for 20 years. We are friends. But when we have to decide the organizers of the competition, we do have to take those decisions and we took them.”
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Monfils in Rotterdam, ranking, and results in 2024
WLWWWLLWLW Ranked world no.70, Monfils has managed to achieve a composed 2-3 match record in 2024. The French player is currently playing in Rotterdam where he defeated the world no.127 Denis Shapovalov 7-64 7-65.
Gael Monfils will take on the world no.4 Jannik Sinner in the 2nd round on Thursday at 7:30 pm on CENTRE COURT. Their actual head to head record is 4-1 for Sinner.
Monfils won 12 titles in his career: 3 on hard courts, 1 on clay courts and 8 on indoor courts. (See the list of his titles)
Monfils is expected to play next in Doha (Qatar ExxonMobil Open). He is currently an alternate. The main draw will start on the 19th of February.
