2 days ago
After 153mph serve breaks Wimbledon record, just how fast can they get?
I f tennis is a battle between power and precision, then the 2025 edition of Wimbledon has given us a winner. Which triumphs — power or touch? — was a question crystallised in the form of a record-breaking serve: the fastest ever delivered here at these championships, hot off the racket of the giant powerhouse Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, fired in at the body of Taylor Fritz at 153mph. One of the curiosities, here, was that his historic serve did not win Mpetshi Perricard the point.
Another of the curiosities is that 'servebot' — as in robotic serving machine — was a put-down that used to be aimed at Fritz. Fritz still has one of the fastest and most effective serves in the game. Here, though, in the story that played out on No1 Court, overnight Monday and finishing on Tuesday, he was the man with the hard hat on having to use all his guile and hand skill to tame the Frenchman's thunderbolts.
