De Minaur banks £625k for three days’ work at UTS London after lifting trophy

Alex de Minaur took home a staggering £625k pay cheque for lifting the trophy at the UTS Grand Final in London.

The world No. 9 won all three of his round-robin matches over three days, plus the semi-final, before beating Holger Rune in Sunday’s championship match.

It’s the second year running that Rune has suffered defeat in the final. But he will still pocket £207k for his run.

De Minaur went undefeated this weekend in London. He started the tournament with victory over Rune in the group stage on Friday before returning on Saturday to beat Jan-Lennard Struff and Alexander Bublik.

After booking his spot in the final four, the 25-year-old beat UTS New York champion Gael Monfils. There is £87k on the line per match, with £61k going to the winner and £26k to the loser.

In the final, the winner takes it all. And there’s a bonus of up to £392k for players who have competed in other UTS events this year. By playing three of the four tournaments in the league, De Minaur added £294k in bonus money to his purse.

But the world No. 9 had no idea that his three-day stint in the Copper Box was so lucrative. “I’m glad you told me because I had no idea! So that’s a nice little bonus for Christmas, we’ll go with that,” he laughed, speaking to Express Sport.

“It’s a cherry on top of the cake. It’s been an incredible weekend, I’ve enjoyed every moment I’ve been on court and obviously being able to finish the weekend with a title and a cheque, I won’t complain.”

Earning £625k for three days’ work is a good effort but it’s even better for De Minaur, who says he viewed this weekend as his time off. Reflecting on his title win, he said: “Well look it feels great, I put some hard work in and I’ve definitely saw the results out there today.

“Feeling quite fit even though there was some brutal rallies and I was able to recover really quickly so that was something I was really proud of.

“Saying that, in a way, these are my days off. So tomorrow I’m back to work. The work continues, we’ve got a whole season to prepare for and I’m very much excited for that.”

After finishing runner-up for the second year in a row, Rune was still happy with his performance. “I think I took a big step after the first match. Today, Alex, this kind of tennis is perfect for him,” he explained.

“There is no first serve so we have to rally every point and that’s really, really good [for him] because he’s one of the strongest players on tour from the baseline.

“I think we had some incredible rallies and physically it was super, super tough with only 30 minutes after the semi-final but all credit to him, he did good.

“I think it’s been a great week. I was disappointed a little bit that I couldn’t finish the job but you can’t look back too much, just learn from it. It’s been a very, very good week for me, how I wanted it to be in the pre-season to get some excellent practice and I got everything out of it.”