“The limits were crossed by Gael” – Mouratoglou explains Monfils disqualification at UTS Oslo
Last weekend saw a brilliant weekend of UTS, with the year’s action kicking off in Oslo and Andrey “Rublo” Rublev taking out the title.
However, one of the big stories of UTS Oslo was the disqualification of UTS veteran Gael “La Monf” Monfils. The Frenchman played his opening match of the tournament on Friday, but after an incident in the locker room involving tournament supervisor Stephane Apostolou, Monfils was disqualified from the rest of the event.
Following the event, UTS Chairman and Founder Patrick Mouratoglou has offered a further explanation of the incident, and what led to La Monf’s disqualification.
“Yes, there is a loosened code of conduct,” Mouratoglou explained, responding to queries around how Monfils was disqualified when UTS has openly loosened its code of conduct. “Because the point is to let the players express themselves much more and feel more free in the court and free to share also with the crowd, and also 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 has to be limits, and unfortunately, the limits were crossed by Gael,” the UTS Chairman and Founder continued. “He didn’t mean anything bad but sometimes you don’t mean bad and you do things that you have to pay the price for.”
“It’s unfortunate, we love Gael, I love Gael, I have known Gael for 20 years. We are friends. But when we have to take a decision as organisers of the competition, we do have to take those decisions and we took them.”
Mouratoglou explains why Monfils incident wasn’t disclosed
Fans have obviously been curious to know what exactly it was that occurred between Monfils and Apostolou in the locker room. Mouratoglou also explained why these details weren’t elaborated on.
“We didn’t give more details because it happened behind the scenes,” said the Frenchman. “It was not on the court, it was outside of the court, and it’s between us and the people involved in what happened. And that’s it. That’s our decision.”
“Gael understands. Gael apologised and he was feeling bad because he didn’t mean bad at all. But that’s how it is.”
Monfils was replaced by Lucas “The French Flair” Pouille at UTS Oslo, who lost in sudden death to Benoit “The Rebel” Paire on his debut.
