West Ham United teammates Tomáš Souček and Vladimír Coufal swapped the pitch for the court on a visit to the Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) Grand Final.
When they are not covering every blade of grass in Claret and Blue, the Czech duo love nothing more than trying their hand at other sports, and both are keen tennis fans and more than able players in their own right.
Souček and Coufal made the short trip across Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to the Copper Box Arena, where the UTS Grand Final will take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets for all three sessions are available HERE.
UTS is the world’s newest, most exciting, innovative tennis league, playing an entirely reinvented game format, with 40-minute matches, in-game interviews with players and live coaching. After three successful events in Oslo, New York and Frankfurt, eight players will battle it out in London to become the overall champion.
The Irons pair lined up on the other side of the net as Australian world No9 Alex de Minaur and Danish world No13 Holger Rune and showed their talents with a racket in hand, successfully returning serves and rallying with the two top tennis professionals.
The quartet played five light-hearted games, with Real Madrid fan De Minaur, who was raised in Spain, and Rune, who lists Portugal legend Cristiano Ronaldo as his favourite footballer. While Souček and Coufal used tennis rackets throughout, the tennis players also used squash rackets, frying pans, cricket bats and even guitars!
“We came to play tennis against professional players today as we all know that the UTS competition is taking place here with some of the best players in the world,” Souček enthused. “We will come to visit as well to support them over the weekend, but today we got the chance to play against two great guys and players!”
Coufal, who attended Wimbledon to cheer on West Ham fan Andy Lapthorne and his compatriot and 2024 ladies’ singles champion Barbora Krejčíková, thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and experience.
He smiled: “We were much better when they played with guitar, for example! It was a great afternoon, and the opportunity and the idea to come here and play with them was great, and we are really happy that we got this opportunity. We will also watch them on the weekend, so it will be perfect for us because we love tennis. I always wanted to try to play with professional players because Tomáš and I are really passionate tennis and padel players.”
So, if the two Hammers met each other in the men’s Wimbledon final, who would win?
Coufal was magnanimous, admitting: “We play each other often, and Tomáš is better than me; I have to say he's better. I need to work on my game, but one day I will maybe beat him in the Wimbledon final!”
Souček was also typically modest, saying: “He [Coufal] is a good player. We don't have that much time to play, but we always try to play in the summer when we have time away from football, and sometimes we play here in London as well. It's a very close game when we play against each other. You could see even today, it was like, one point for me, one point for Vlad, but it's always a good, competitive game.”
Back to the professionals and competing alongside De Minaur and Rune at the Copper Box Arena will be Gaël Monfils, Andrey Rublev, Ugo Humbert, Alexander Bublik, Thanasi Kokkinakis and Jan-Lennard Struff.
After three round-robin ties on Friday and Saturday, the top two finishers in each of two groups will compete in the semi-finals and final on Sunday. Tickets for the UTS Grand Final are available HERE.
