UTS Rio presented by XP opened Thursday with four Melee round-robin matches at the Maracan\u00e3zinho, headlined by Guto Miguel\u2019s 3-2 upset of Nick Kyrgios and completed by three winning tour debuts by Cameron Norrie, Tallon Griekspoor and Brandon Nakashima, a rough night for former UTS champion Corentin Moutet, and top seed Francisco Cer\u00fandolo, already looking ahead to a World Cup final in New York.<\/p>\n
The night\u2019s biggest story belonged to Guto Miguel. The 17-year-old Brazilian, whose ATP ranking sits at 824th, beat former Wimbledon finalist Kyrgios 3-2 in quarters (21-12, 15-10, 13-16, 15-21, 2-0 in Sudden Death) in front of his home crowd, for the first big win of his professional career.<\/p>\n
Guto Miguel raced through the first two quarters before Kyrgios, at his best with a nine-point run, forced a decider. Guto Miguel closed out the match with a clean sheet in Sudden Death, having pushed Kyrgios into taking on too much risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cNick is a guy I grew up watching play\u201d<\/p>\n
Beating his idol felt like fantasy made real: \u201cNick is a guy I grew up watching play, so it\u2019s very cool\u201d, Guto Miguel said. \u201cJust sharing the court with him is an honor, and people enjoying it, so it was a dream come true.\u201d On the match, he said: \u201cIt was a game that I started very well, then he took away my rhythm, I ended up getting a little lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
His cheekiest moment came on a winner played from behind his back, after Kyrgios had already pulled off two trick shots of his own: \u201cWhen I saw him from behind, I said: \u2018I have to take advantage of the opportunity.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyrgios flagged the smallest of margins on the final point: \u201cOn that last serve, I thought it was out. It kind of startled me a little bit, but we know that UTS comes down to a couple of points here or there.\u201d He laughed off ending up on the wrong side of his own trademark shot: \u201cI got a taste of my own medicine, but it was a lot of fun.\u201d And he brushed the loss off as barely a dent before challenging Joao Fonseca on Friday on the most expected match of the Melee: \u201cI used today as a bit of a warm-up, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
Guto Miguel was not the only player to win on debut. Brandon Nakashima beat the 2025 UTS Hong Kong champion and seed No.1, Cer\u00fandolo, 3-1 in quarters (13-11, 10-18, 16-15, 12-11), recovering from a heavy second-quarter loss to close out two single-point deciders. \u201cIt was a crazy match. First experience for me, put right into it, and it was super fun,\u201d Nakashima said.<\/p>\n
Tallon Griekspoor and Cameron Norrie also opened with wins, both at the expense of 2021 UTS 4 champion Corentin Moutet, who is already out of the race for the Final Four.<\/p>\n
Griekspoor opened the tournament with a 3-2 win over Moutet (14-11, 13-14, 16-11, 10-15, 3-2 in Sudden Death), a five-quarter thriller that swung through faulted serves on both sides before Griekspoor closed it out with a winner. Cameron Norrie did not let the Frenchman go that far in the closing match of the day, winning 3-1 (14-12, 21-9, 12-14, 16-14) later that evening.<\/p>\n
Fonseca\u2019s debut on Friday<\/p>\n
For Cer\u00fandolo, the tournament\u2019s top seed, the defeat to Nakashima came with a distraction he made no effort to hide. Argentina reached the World Cup final for a second consecutive tournament on Wednesday, and Cer\u00fandolo has already booked a flight to New York to watch Sunday\u2019s game in the stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday was a great day for all the Argentinians \u2013 making another World Cup final, it\u2019s amazing,\u201d he said. Asked if football had been on his mind during the match, he admitted in a smile: \u201cMaybe a little bit, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norrie and Nakashima sit atop the early standings on quarter and point differential after one win apiece, with Guto Miguel and Griekspoor just behind on a lower quarter differential. Kyrgios and Cer\u00fandolo are both still searching for a first win, while Moutet sits at the bottom, already eliminated. Fonseca, the second seed, has yet to play a match \u2013 both of his round-robin ties come on Friday.<\/p>\n
Friday brings four more Melee matches, including the tournament debut of second seed and local hero Jo\u00e3o Fonseca, who plays twice, and an immediate rematch between Thursday\u2019s two winning debutants, Guto Miguel and Nakashima.<\/p>\n
Day 1 results:
\u2022 Tallon Griekspoor d. Corentin Moutet 3-2 (14-11, 13-14, 16-11, 10-15, 3-2 SD)
\u2022 Brandon Nakashima d. Francisco Cer\u00fandolo (1) 3-1 (13-11, 10-18, 16-15, 12-11)
\u2022 Guto Miguel d. Nick Kyrgios 3-2 (21-12, 15-10, 13-16, 15-21, 2-0 SD)
\u2022 Cameron Norrie d. Corentin Moutet 3-1 (14-12, 21-9, 12-14, 16-14)<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s schedule:
\u2022 Guto Miguel v Brandon Nakashima 6:00 pm
\u2022 Jo\u00e3o Fonseca (2) v Tallon Griekspoor 7:00 pm
\u2022 Francisco Cer\u00fandolo (1) v Cameron Norrie 8:00 pm
\u2022 Jo\u00e3o Fonseca (2) v Nick Kyrgios 9:00 pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UTS Rio presented by XP opened Thursday with four Melee round-robin matches at the Maracan\u00e3zinho, headlined by Guto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-768554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}