Indian Aces and UAE Royals coaches John-Laffnie De Jager and Fabrice Santoro believe the IPTL has brought back the smiles to the faces of the players who have found much solace in being part of a team.

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De Jager will try to guide the Royals to victory this weekend by snatching the lead from the teeth of Santoro’s Aces squad.

The South African former doubles specialist describes the IPTL as the perfect competition between competitiveness and enjoyment – the latter being something he feels has been lacking on the professional tour.

“The biggest thing that I think that this league has done is put smiles back on tennis players’ faces,” said the UAE Royals boss.

“Because they’re always so serious. But now they can be serious and play for a team, they can see the fun side of it.

“In Delhi, it was the loudest tennis match I’ve ever been involved with. I’ve been involved in tennis for 25 years. It’s incredible… The way guys were fighting to win.

“We have three teams that can win this title. Everybody wants to be serious about who is going to win this first title.

"We’re all chasing the Indian Aces. They’ve had a great run so far. But there’s still teams that we know can win this, so it’s important to the players.”

Organisers say the league has created incredible camaraderie amongst the players “which is unheard of in tennis” according to IPTL CEO Morgan Menahem and that stars like the Royals’ Novak Djokovic and the Aces’ Roger Federer decided to play extra sets than they had initially committed to in India because they wanted to step up for their teams.

Santoro says one real advantage of the league is the fact that it has given young players like Nick Kyrgios – who plays for the Singapore Slammers – a chance to get up close and personal with some top stars, which provided invaluable learning experience for the 19-year-old Aussie up-and-comer.

 “If you look at the Singapore Slammers for example, I’m sure a kid like Kyrgios has learnt a lot from Pat Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt in the past two weeks.

"Because they weren’t only the bench and on the court together but also having breakfast, lunch and dinner together, talking about the future of his game, of his career, how he should work if he wants to go to the top. And there are many examples like this in every team.”

The retired Frenchman gave further endorsement to the league, saying: “This is one of my best professional experiences in the past 25 years, what I’ve lived in these two weeks.

"I had the chance to be on tour for 21 years, I played 70 grand slams and I was so lucky during my career and I had great memories. But what I lived in the past two and half weeks is just unbelievable.

“When I left Manila after the first three days I said ‘I’m 99 per cent sure that this IPTL will work because it’s great’.

“When you have No1 and No2 in the world (Djokovic and Federer) playing in Delhi, playing the same level of tennis as the Wimbledon final four months ago, but the difference was between the points, they were smiling. That wasn’t the case at Wimbledon.”