Playing Joao Fonseca in his own backyard is tough enough. Playing him in front of a Maracanãzinho crowd that showed up loud from the opening ball is a whole different animal, and Tallon Griekspoor found that out the hard way in Rio. Down a set and dialed in on a second-quarter tiebreak, the Dutchman ran into the full force of the home crowd, and he took it like a pro afterward.

“Never had so much love…it was an unbelievable experience. It’s such a pleasure to be here and play in front of you guys”, Griekspoor said during the mid-match live interview.

The moment came in the second quarter, tied at 13-13 with Griekspoor serving to close it out. And the building never let up, chanting Fonseca’s name to try to will their guy back into it after he’d dropped the opener. It worked, as Griekspoor dumped his lone serve, handing the quarter and the momentum to Fonseca, who battled back from a lopsided 9-19 quarter-one hole to win the match 3-1, closing it out behind serve efficiency north of 58 percent.

Missing that one look under UTS rules had to be a crucial point, where players get a single serve to keep the format moving fast. Scoring runs by the quarter rather than the standard set: first to win three of four quarters takes the match, and if it’s knotted at two quarters apiece, it goes to a sudden-death breaker and the first player to reach two points with a two-point margin wins.

Another UTS innovation showed up during the changeover, when Griekspoor took questions from the broadcast booth on the spot, part of the format’s push for more courtside access between players and fans, coaches, and cameras. The event also leans into nicknames as part of the show. Griekspoor goes by “Dutch Dynamite,” while Fonseca plays under “The Rocket”.

Unfortunately for the home crowd, Fonseca lost his next match to Kyrgios and did not make the semifinals. But the whole week carried extra weight beyond one match. This was the 18th edition of the UTS tour and the first ever held in South America, drawing a Maracanãzinho crowd that filled the arena for two straight nights. Still, the home-court pressure has now shifted fully onto Guto Miguel, the Brazilian teenager who topped the group stage by winning back-to-back sudden-death deciders.