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From tropical islands, to remote settings, to the world’s largest cities, the ATP Challenger Tour knows no bounds as the 46th Challenger season is set to get underway this week.

The season will unfold with five tournaments, including in New Caledonia, Australia, Thailand, Argentina, and Portugal. Across several time zones, you could open the new year by watching live Challenger matches for 24 hours non stop.

One event to keep your eyes on will be the season-opening Noumea Challenger. A short walk from the Coral Sea, Noumea is a piece of tennis paradise with breathtaking views. The French territory located in the south Pacific will host a Challenger event for the 17th year and for the first time since January 2020. 

Ligue de Tennis de Nouvelle-Calédonie, host site of the Noumea Challenger. Credit: Open SIFA Nouvelle-Calédonie

Cristian Garin, Hugo Grenier, Zsombor Piros, and Benoit Paire are among those who will compete at the Noumea Challenger.

Casper Ruud's Australian swing was cut short one year ago as an ankle injury forced his withdrawal from the Australian Open after two ATP Cup wins. The Norwegian will once again begin his season by representing his country Down Under, this time at the inaugural United Cup.

The World No. 3 will need a strong start on Sunday if he is to keep Team Norway alive in its Group E matchup with Brazil. Ruud faces Thiago Monteiro in Brisbane as he looks to earn his nation its first match win of the event and cut into Brazil's 2-0 lead. Norway requires a Sunday sweep on New Year's Day to win the tie, with Ulrikke Eikeri set to meet Brazil's Laura Pigossi in the second singles match, before what Norway hopes will be a decisive mixed-doubles finale.

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With the unique, all-inclusive format of the United Cup, even the presence of a 22-time Grand Slam champion is no guarantee of success for Team Spain.

When Rafael Nadal fell on Saturday to Cameron Norrie 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, and compatriot Nuria Parrizas Diaz lost to Katie Swan, Great Britain took a daunting 2-0 lead. And yet, there are reasons to think this one might not be over. Two reasons: Paula Badosa and Pablo Carreno Busta, who will carry the flag for Spain.

With the United Cup underway in Australia, two ATP Tour events will follow as the 2023 season opens in style across two continents. A pair of ATP 250 events are set to begin during the first week of the new year: the Adelaide International I and the Tata Open Maharashtra in Pune.

Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev are among four 2022 Nitto ATP Finals participants in the loaded Adelaide singles draw, while Marin Cilic leads the field in Pune.

ATPTour.com looks ahead at 10 things to watch this week.

View Draws: Adelaide | Pune

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH IN ADELAIDE:
1) Top Seed Djokovic Returns To Australia: Back in action Down Under for the first time since he won the 2021 Australian Open, the World No. 5 leads the field in Adelaide, where he won his third ATP Tour title in 2007. The Serbian finished the 2022 season by winning a record-tying sixth Nitto ATP Finals crown, and lifted the title in four of his past five ATP Tour tournaments dating back to Wimbledon.

Returning finalist Emil Ruusuvuori, seeded third at the Tata Open Maharashtra, attended the event's draw ceremony on Saturday as he learned his path back to the title match in India. The Norwegian could face 15-year-old wild card Manas Dhamne — a home-nation favourite who also took part in the ceremony ahead of his tour-level debut — in the quarter-finals.

Top seed and two-time former champion Marin Cilic — who won the 2009 and 2010 titles when the event was held in Chennai — was placed on the draw's top line as the top seed at the ATP 250. After a bye, he will face a Spaniard in the second round: Roberto Carballes Baena or Bernebe Zapata Miralles. Fourth seed Sebastian Baez is a potential semi-final opponent, with seventh seed Jaume Munar and eighth seed Aslan Karatsev also in the top half.

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Second seed Botic van de Zandschulp anchors the draw on its bottom line and will open against either Indian wild card Mukund Sasikumar or a qualifier in the second round. He is joined in the bottom half by Ruusuvuori, fifth seed Alex Molcan and sixth seed Filip Krajinovic, with the latter to meet Indian wild card Sumit Nagal in the first round.

Main-draw play in Pune begins on 2 January, with four places still to be filled by qualifiers.

During the US Open, former World No. 25 Fernando Meligeni wrote a philosophical Instagram post about the relationship between Carlos Alcaraz and his coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero. The first line read “No nos rendimos”, a Portgueuse phrase that means “Never give up”.

One person who took notice was his nephew, Felipe Meligeni Alves, who is a member of Team Brazil at the United Cup. The 24-year-old, who earned his first ATP Tour win on Saturday against Norwegian Viktor Durasovic, took the message to heart. He got the message tattooed on his left arm.

“I just like to motivate myself,” Meligeni Alves told ATPTour.com. “I just wanted to do it.”

That is far from the only tattoo the Brazilian has. He has another Portuguese message on his right arm that means, “You can’t have big dreams if you don’t chase them”.

That is what the No. 166 player in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings is doing. The Brazilian is trying to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and leave his mark on the ATP Tour. By the end of 2023, he would like to crack the Top 100.

Team Czech Republic chat in the Team Zone

Marie Bouzkova in action on Saturday in Sydney.

Team Belgium celebrates Alison Van Uytvanck's win over Team Bulgaria's Isabella Shinikova in Perth.

Grigor Dimitrov levels the tie in Perth by downing David Goffin.

Fans supporting Spain on in Sydney.

Donna Vekic came through two contrasting sets to defeat Maria Lourdes Carle 6-0, 6-4 in Perth, getting Team Croatia off to a dream start over Team Argentina at United Cup.

A one-sided opener saw the former WTA No.19 overpower Carle relentlessly. Vekic played flawless aggressive tennis while committing only one unforced error, teeing off on each of her opponent's second serves and conceding a meagre five points overall.

But 22-year-old Carle got her teeth into the contest to make the second set a highly entertaining affair. The WTA No.147 began using her slice to blunt Vekic's power, and canny use of that shot also set up a stellar pass to break for 3-2.

However, a pivotal sixth game saw Carle miss triple game point — the third when a dead net cord went against her — to consolidate her break. Scrambling through a drop shot exchange, Vekic captured the best point of the match en route to levelling at 3-3.

The level remained high through the remainder of the set, with the drop shot continuing to play a significant role for both players. In the end, the final game was decided by the finest of margins. Serving to stay in the match, Carle squandered two game points — the first with a double fault, and the second when a putative forehand winner went wide by millimetres.

Despite falling to defeat against Cameron Norrie on Saturday, Rafael Nadal is looking to take the positives from his opening performance of the season at the United Cup. The World No. 2, who won the first set in Sydney, was competing for the first time since November, when he played at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin.

“It was not a disaster at all,” Nadal said. “I can do things better, and I need to do it. But as I said, I have not had many matches. I think he played the first match two days ago. I think that's an advantage, especially if you win the match the way that he did.

“And then I need to be a little bit faster physically, a little bit more solid, some fewer mistakes and making better decisions at some point, playing a little bit longer. I think there is a way to improve, but I have time before the Australian Open starts in two weeks. But either way, we still focus on this competition. Let's support now Nuria [Parrizas Diaz], and then let's see what can happen, because we need to win this tie to keep having any chances.”

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The 36-year-old is spearheading Team Spain at the United Cup this week, a new mixed-teams event held across Brisbane, Perth and Sydney. Nadal, who is teaming with WTA star Paula Badosa and Montreal champion Pablo Carreno Busta, has enjoyed the experience so far.

Tributes to Pele have continued to pour in, including from some of the biggest stars in tennis, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Federer once met Pele and exchanged memorabilia with the football legend.

“Thank you for inspiring millions of sports fans and athletes,” Federer wrote on Instagram. “I count myself so fortunate to have met you and gotten a chance to learn and look up to you. You were one of the first true global sporting icons. Rest in peace King Pele ??”

Djokovic also paid tribute to the Brazilian icon on Instagram stories. Another star who posted was Nadal.

Cameron Norrie had never won a set in his four previous meetings against Rafael Nadal prior to their clash at the United Cup. However, the World No. 14 turned the tables in dramatic style Saturday when he overcame the 36-year-old 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a statement win to give Team Great Britain a 1-0 lead against Team Spain in Sydney.

In front of a capacity Ken Rosewall Arena crowd, the 27-year-old timed the ball cleanly off both wings, hitting through Nadal with his flat backhand to triumph after two hours and 45 minutes.

"It was a great match," Norrie said. "At the beginning of the match he was winning some of the tricky points. Him coming to the net and drop-shotting me. I managed to stay tough in the longer rallies and embraced the situation. I think by ranking it is the biggest win of my career."

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Norrie now holds a 2-0 record on the new season, having defeated Australian Alex de Minaur in his opening match at the new mixed-teams event. Great Britain, led by captain Tim Henman, won that opening Group D tie 3-2. Katie Swan will aim to double her nation’s lead when she faces Spaniard Nuria Parrizas Diaz in the last match of the day in Sydney.

World No. 1 Iga Swiatek showed no signs of rust in her first match of the 2023 season, defeating Yulia Putintseva 6-1, 6-3 at the United Cup. The victory gave second seed Poland a 1-0 lead over Kazakhstan in Brisbane. 

Poland's No. 2 men's singles player, Daniel Michalski, will look to build on Swiatek's efforts when he faces Timofey Skatov to close out the day's play on Pat Rafter Arena.  

With Polish great Agnieszka Radwanska looking on from the captain's box, Swiatek needed just three games before finding the rhythm and range that made her the runaway 2022 Hologic WTA Tour Player of the Year. Putintseva earned an early break point chance in Swiatek's first game, but the Pole coolly erased it with pinpoint accuracy. 

"I'm pretty happy with my performance," Swiatek said. "First matches of the season are always rusty. I was happy that in the important moments I was really composed." 

Under pressure again while serving at 1-1, 0/30, Swiatek found another gear to reel off 12 consecutive points to build a 4-1 lead. Having made six unforced errors in the first three games, Swiatek would make just one for the rest of the set, pocketing the set after 27 minutes. 

Bringing ATP and WTA stars together at the United Cup may be something new, but many of the cross-Tour friendships within the 16 competing teams have considerably longer histories.

Take Team Croatia’s Borna Coric and Donna Vekic, who have known each other so long they can barely recall their first meeting.

“I think it was almost 20 years ago, so I don’t remember a lot, but we’ve known each other basically since we started playing tennis,” WTA No. 67 Vekic told ATPTour.com this week in Perth. “We’ve been together for our whole career.”

Coric retains a few more memories of the pair’s early days in their homeland.

“I remember her, we were playing under-10s in Zagreb,” said the No. 26 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, before smiling and starting to tease his teammate about her younger self. “I didn’t like her much back then actually, back then she was very nervous, very arrogant as well, but now she changed. So, I’m just enjoying spending time here with her and the whole team.”

Alison Van Uytvanck kicked off Belgium's United Cup campaign with a hard-fought 6-1, 3-6, 6-2 win over Bulgaria's Isabella Shinikova in one hour and 43 minutes.

Five-time Hologic WTA Tour titlist Van Uytvanck had entered as the favourite against No.381-ranked Shinikova and lived up to that status over a dominant first half-hour. She rattled through eight of the first 10 games, going up a break for 2-1 in the second set as Shinikova double faulted twice.

But Shinikova, who showed little sign of the leg injury that had beset her during a three-set defeat to Greece's Despina Papamichail on Day 1, struck back in style. Introducing more variety into her game, the 31-year-old added subtle chips and drop shots to her aggressive tactics to turn the second set around.

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Van Uytvanck's error count increased from six to 20 as she struggled to adjust. Striking winners off both wings with real panache, Shinikova took five of the next six games to level the match and set her sights on a sixth career Top 100 win.

Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev could be headed for an early-season showdown after both landed in the top half of the Adelaide International 1 draw. Top-seeded Djokovic and third-seeded Medvedev could meet in the semi-finals of the ATP 250, which features four Top 10 players.

In the bottom half, which contains four players in the Top 15 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, second seed Felix Auger-Aliassime is seeded to meet Rolex Paris Masters champion Holger Rune in the quarter-finals, with a potential meeting against fourth seed Andrey Rublev or sixth seed Jannik Sinner in the semi-finals.

First up, Djokovic faces a first-time meeting with World No. 65 Frenchman Constant Lestienne, with the winner to play either Australian wild card Jordan Thompson or Frenchman Quentin Halys in the second round.

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The first seed Djokovic could meet is seventh-seeded Canadian Denis Shapovalov, who opens against a qualifier.

World No. 15 Beatriz Haddad Maia improved her United Cup record to 2-0 after defeating Malene Helgo of Norway 6-4, 6-2 on Day 3 in Brisbane. The victory kicked off Brazil's tie with Norway, giving the Brazilians a 1-0 lead.

World No. 166 Felipe Meligeni Alves will try to extend Brazil's lead against World No. 343 Viktor Durasovic in the No. 2 men's singles match later on Saturday.

Haddad Maia has enjoyed a dominant start to her season, having lost just two games to Martina Trevisan of Italy on Day 1.

"I entered the court trying to improve my game, to do better things than I couldn't do two days before," Haddad Maia said. "I was trying to be as aggressive as I could. I was happy that I was patient and giving myself chances one more time, even if I was missing. I was happy with the way I was thinking in this match."

Read Feature: Team Brazil Pays Tribute To Pele

Jiri Lehecka equalled the biggest win of his career by Pepperstone ATP Ranking Saturday when he upset World No. 12 Alexander Zverev 6-4, 6-2 to give Team Czech Republic a 1-0 lead in its tie against Team Germany at the United Cup.

The 21-year-old was pumped up throughout the one-hour, 34-minute clash on Ken Rosewall Arena, producing a clean-hitting display to outlast Zverev in the baseline exchanges. The World No. 81 broke four times and looked sharp at the net, consistently moving forward effectively to finish points.

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The 2022 Next Gen ATP runner-up Lehecka, who also defeated then-World No. 12 Denis Shapovalov en route to the semi-finals in Rotterdam last season, lost against Taylor Fritz in his opening match of the season earlier this week.

However, he has given his nation the perfect start to its tie against Germany as it looks to bounce back from its Group C tie defeat against Team United States. Marie Bouzkova will look to double her nation's lead when she faces Jule Niemeier in the second match of Day 3 in Sydney.

Day 3 of the United Cup features two of its biggest stars, 22-time Grand Slam singles champion Rafael Nadal and WTA No.1 Iga Swiatek and 

Both players are coming off memorable 2022 seasons, both on and off the court. And they will be challenged, they say, to move forward after those successes. Nadal — who won the Australian Open and Roland Garros this past year — and his wife, Maria, welcomed their first child, Rafael Nadal Perello, back in October.

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Nadal, 36, now the all-time leader with 22 men's major singles titles, took a break after losing to Frances Tiafoe in the fourth round of the US Open. He was asked about his new role of father.

“Well,” he said, smiling, “the first event I played as a father without the baby with me, I lost [Paris] first round. Second event, travelling with the baby, I was out of the [Nitto ATP Finals] group stage. At the end I won my last match, but I need to keep improving, no? Easy.”

Corentin Moutet ended his 2022 season in style.

Just two months after reaching the fourth round of the US Open for the first time, the 23-year-old Frenchman notched impressive three-set wins against Borna Coric and Cameron Norrie to reach the third round at November's Rolex Paris Masters. That run propelled him to a career-high No. 51 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings.

Now, the entertaining lefty joins TopCourt to demonstrate the sort of shots and technique that have enabled him to neutralize bigger hitters and turn a game of power into a game of chess. From his experiences leaving home as a young teen to chase his dream of becoming a pro, to questioning his desire to continue the pursuit, Moutet’s journey is a valuable lesson in perseverance.

Technique: Moutet teaches two of his most masterful shots — the backhand slice and the forehand lob. In his backhand slice class, Corentin teaches you how to keep the ball low and angling away from his opponent. In his forehand lob class, he shares how he disrupts taller opponents by changing the speed and rhythm of a point.

Drills: Moutet brings three of his favourite drills to his TopCourt class. The first focuses on neutralising a point, the second on dictating a point with your forehand, and the third on executing points at the net.

Mastery of multitasking could hold the key for success at the inaugural United Cup.

Six of the 18 nations in the mixed-teams event are led by ‘playing captains’, including four in Perth. Team Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov is one of the stars trying to balance supporting their teammates with their own match preparation in the Western Australian capital.

“It's a little different; I'm not gonna lie,” said eight-time ATP Tour champion Dimitrov. On Thursday he supported his teammate Isabella Shinikova courtside as she took on Team Greece’s Despina Papamichail, while simultaneously preparing for the following match on the RAC Arena schedule, his own singles clash against Stefanos Tsitsipas.

“I was in and out [of the team box],” said Dimitrov, who does have previous experience as a playing captain from the 2020 ATP Cup. “I had to eat some and rest some and tie my shoes and prepare. Usually, I have all that time to do things by myself for myself, and now it was in a completely different rhythm for me, which was okay. I mean, I did that in the ATP Cup.

“Obviously it takes a little bit more energy than usual, but I felt that I was managing it quite well, again, even with my match. So, it was a very close call. It's something that just you have got to deal with, I guess.”

The world mourned Friday after learning football icon Pele had passed away. The news hit close to home for Brazil’s United Cup team, which battled hard to honour the legend in Brisbane.

“I think everybody, not just us, but Brazil and the whole world is going to miss him,” Luisa Stefani said after her mixed doubles win alongside Rafael Matos. “He’s got a great personality and he’s a great ambassador for football, but also for sport in general. He managed to get people united, which I think is what we’re trying to do with this tournament.”

Stefani added: “We played today to honour him and to celebrate him because that’s what he did. He played with his heart, he showed love to everybody, so that’s what Team Brazil is going to do not only today but for the rest of the tournament and the rest of the year. So thanks Pele, rest in peace.”

"We played today to honour him and to celebrate him." @Luisa__Stefani with beautiful words of tribute to Pele ??#UnitedCup pic.twitter.com/a61CARkTBq

Thiago Monteiro, Brazil's No. 1 men's singles player, reflected on Pele’s impact on his day-to-day life.