Fastest tennis serve at Wimbledon

Two of the biggest servers in the men’s game – Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard and Taylor Fritz – faced off in Round 1 at The Wimbledon Championships in London, UK, on 30 June 2025. The fifth-seeded American prevailed 6-7, 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 6-4 in a two-day, 3-hr 25-min shoot-out described as an “all-time epic”, but it was Perricard, the 2.01-m (6-ft 7.1-in) Frenchman, who made the headlines at 30-love in the first game of the match with a serve clocked by the speed gun at 153 mph (246.23 km/h) – the fastest ever recorded at a Grand Slam event. Against the odds, Fritz got his racket on the bullet and chipped a forehand down the line, taking control of the rally and winning the point with a volley.

Perricard’s serve was 5 mph (8 km/h) faster than previous record holder Taylor Dent’s 148-mph (238.18-km/h) Round 2 rocket against Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon on 23 June 2010 that aced the Serbian great. Perricard broke Dent’s record with a 149-mph (239.79-km/h) serve on the first point of the match, following it up with a 146-mph (234.96-km/h) serve to go 30-love up before crushing his own short-lived mark on point three. Fritz-Perricard was contested on No.1 Court with the roof closed, on the hottest opening day ever recorded at The Wimbledon Championships: 32°C (89.6°F). Sam Groth’s 163.7-mph (263.45-km/h) howitzer at the Busan Open Challenger event in South Korea on 9 May 2012, during the Australian’s 6-4, 6-3 defeat to Belarusian Uladzimir Ignatik, unofficially remains the biggest serve on record, although the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) does not recognize it as a Tour-level achievement due to the standard of the radar guns used at Challenger-level tournaments. Perricard’s record 153-mph serve briefly came under threat at the US Open on 11 September 2026. A speed-gun glitch recorded one of Ben Shelton’s serves at 158 mph (254.27 km/h) during his semi-final win against Frances Tiafoe, but the reading was later corrected to ‘just’ 144 mph (231.74 km/h).