Holmes
Legend
Do you realize how singularly great it is to be top 30 in history at anything?
Patrick Mouratoglou says : Nick Kyrgios has the Best Serve of all time
- Thread starter Razer
- Start date
Holmes
Legend
Lord knows he didn't make that Wimbledon semi at 35 on his serve
TheFifthSet
G.O.A.T.
Weirdly enough I think he’s unintentionally correct here LOL.
Holmes
Legend
Very intentional I assure you. The only unintentional aspect of the post is any offense or controversy others may have taken from it.
stringertom
Bionic Poster
You’re a very small minded person to label someone you don’t like with the highly inaccurate and, now, admittedly deliberate slur. Call him a choker, it’s true he earned that moniker in the biggest match of his career. Dislike his attitude if you wish; everybody is entitled to opinions. However, he wasn’t a nobody or an unknown. That shows low maturity, especially for someone in their sunset years.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
We don’t judge tennis players pound for pound, do we - this is not boxing.
Razer
G.O.A.T.
Leaderboard | ATP Tour | Tennis
Statistical measures of the best-performing players in three key categories in men's professional tennis.www.atptour.com
On ATP serve leaderboard list for careers, Isner is #1, Karlovic is #2, Opelka is #3, Raonic is #4, Roddick is #5, Nick is #6, Federer is #10 and Sampras is #14. Interestingly, Tsitsipas is #19 a couple of spots above Nadal who is also ranked better than Djokovic.
This serve leaderboard makes no sense
Nadal is rated higher than Ivanisevic. If Nadal sees this then even he will laugh at this tomfoolery, he must be trying all his life to get a better serve and here he is rated ahead of Goran...... big joke.
Kralingen
Bionic Poster
Hot take. Was Pete’s second serve THAT good? I felt like the thing with him is he could go big on a 2nd serve, but hit it the same as a first serve…
In terms of actual variety and changing up spins, paces, etc there are others who have better 2nds clearly. Namely Isner, and by some distance. Also Roddick had an amazing second, even Federer probably got more kick and spin on his 2nds. Andy especially mastered the body serve which Sampras didn’t really love to do.
Let me pose it this way - if Pete’s second serve truly was the best then why couldn’t he ever dominate with it on clay? I’ve seen Becker and Goran kick the ball over guys heads on the 90s clay, never saw Pete do it. That matters. I’m prepared for disagreement.
In terms of actual variety and changing up spins, paces, etc there are others who have better 2nds clearly. Namely Isner, and by some distance. Also Roddick had an amazing second, even Federer probably got more kick and spin on his 2nds. Andy especially mastered the body serve which Sampras didn’t really love to do.
Let me pose it this way - if Pete’s second serve truly was the best then why couldn’t he ever dominate with it on clay? I’ve seen Becker and Goran kick the ball over guys heads on the 90s clay, never saw Pete do it. That matters. I’m prepared for disagreement.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
I wish the ATP would show the formulas they use for their leaderboards. No idea what it all means either.
tennisandtennis
Semi-Pro
Is that just getting the return into play or winning the return point. I think the former is a better stat assessing the return stroke
jm1980
Talk Tennis Guru
The ATP stats are usually centered around the return game as a whole. I think it's based on first and second serve return win %, break points win %, return games win %, etc.
Third Serve
Talk Tennis Guru
Did a double take here because I only ever see Tsitsipas called "Stef" on this board.
Third Serve
Talk Tennis Guru
Fraud's serve, while still a brilliant shot, probably isn't top 10 all time.
TheFifthSet
G.O.A.T.
Krish0608
G.O.A.T.
And NK
Krish0608
G.O.A.T.
Because serve is the least important shot on clay
Wurm
Professional
It shouldn't need mentioning over and over and over again that clay court prowess inflates the ATP idea of return "stats" because the higher bounce redirects more of the pace of the ball vertically instead of it skidding towards the player. The ball might technically be moving quicker after the bounce on some clay courts versus on certain skiddier surfaces but more of the speed is being carried vertically so the ball gets to the player slower, ergo the return is easier, ergo it's easier to neutralise and give the returner a chance to turn the point into one they're dictating.
Take clay court stats out of the picture and the stats are a bit more reflective of raw returning ability but they're still open to interpretation.
That Murray isn't even in his top 5, and Nalbandian is #2, makes me think he might post on TTW.
spottishwood
Hall of Fame
Nadal>>>
www.atptour.com
Leaderboard | ATP Tour | Tennis
Statistical measures of the best-performing players in three key categories in men's professional tennis.
www.atptour.com
TheFifthSet
G.O.A.T.
The ATP career return leaderboard has two unknowns on top, Nadal at #3, Djokovic at #6, Agassi at #14, Murray at #17 and Federer at a whopping #101. And yet people wonder why Nadal and Djokovic are breaking many of Federer’s records.
Leaderboard | ATP Tour | Tennis
Statistical measures of the best-performing players in three key categories in men's professional tennis.
Boy, not this again
Well, here we go:Once you adjust for competition his return game across all surfaces is right up there with Agassi’s and Murray’s, and better than Nadal’s on 2 of 3 surfaces. Fed is absolutely an ATG returner.
TheFifthSet
G.O.A.T.
The thing that’s perhaps surprised me the most when d!cking around on TA is A-Rod’s unreturned second serve %. It was lower than you’d expect…even Agassi and Wawrinka had better marks. Doesn’t match my eye test. There’s more to a great second serve than that (and I agree his 2nd was awesome, ten-fold better than Dre’s or Wawa’s), but it was still surprising that he didn’t get more freebies off it.
Karlovic’s %’s was surprising for the opposite reason. 31.7% unreturned seconds is monstrous for someone whose second never gets included in these discussions, it was 2nd all time to…drumroll…Cressy, 43.2% (yeah, really).
smalahove
Hall of Fame
The ATP career return leaderboard has two unknowns on top, Nadal at #3, Djokovic at #6, Agassi at #14, Murray at #17 and Federer at a whopping #101. And yet people wonder why Nadal and Djokovic are breaking many of Federer’s records.
Leaderboard | ATP Tour | Tennis
Statistical measures of the best-performing players in three key categories in men's professional tennis.
Looking at the return rankings for the different surfaces is interesting, as they are pretty different. But one thing that caught my eye was how high Diego ranks in all of them: he's #4(!) on the career grass ranking. He's the OG returnbot (as his serve is as bad as his returns are great)
TheNachoMan
Legend
Wurm
Professional
My memory of it at the time was that Pete's serve didn't stand out above about half a dozen other players who were around back then, but there is this annoying trick people have whereby someone has to have the greatest serve/return/whatever because they're the top player around at that moment and a certain feature of their game is exceptional. That serve came on top of all the other wonderful gifts he had that contributed to his success.
I would argue Schwartzman's returning ability should be given way more credit than it typically gets.
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DerPflegerDUS
New User
How about Greg Rusedski his serve was also not Bad
game..set..match
Semi-Pro
So isner and karlovic being damn near 7ft doesn’t contribute anything to the effectiveness of their service. Ok
While the others listed surely have fine serves, Sampras in my opinion is rated criminally low. Statistics alone will not tell the entire story. Sampras' serving acumen seemed to elevate based on the occasion, particularly on the Wimbledon grass in the latter stages of the tournament.
THUNDERVOLLEY
G.O.A.T.
eThe ATP career return leaderboard has two unknowns on top, Nadal at #3, Djokovic at #6, Agassi at #14, Murray at #17 and Federer at a whopping #101. And yet people wonder why Nadal and Djokovic are breaking many of Federer’s records.
Leaderboard | ATP Tour | Tennis
Statistical measures of the best-performing players in three key categories in men's professional tennis.
Interesting--something the worst of Federer's worshipers will never acknowledge.
socallefty
G.O.A.T.
So what - they don’t get dinged for it. The return leaderboard is full of short guys and the serve leaderboard is full of tall guys. That is how tennis works. Are you biased against tall people? Should we asterisk all the NBA records because they are held by tall basketball players?
We don’t have records for runts or giants - just tennis players.
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TTMR
Hall of Fame
The ATP career return leaderboard has two unknowns on top, Nadal at #3, Djokovic at #6, Agassi at #14, Murray at #17 and Federer at a whopping #101. And yet people wonder why Nadal and Djokovic are breaking many of Federer’s records.
Leaderboard | ATP Tour | Tennis
Statistical measures of the best-performing players in three key categories in men's professional tennis.
Novak at #56 is really disappointing. Even Coach Vajda is #40 for crying out loud.
I see
NonP
Legend
Alright kids, you've awakened your resident guru on all things serve (at least until good ol' @encyclopedia comes back). Another infallible dissertation and a couple shorter replies to follow:
If you're including Nick in that group then the most (statistically) impressive members by far are Ivanisevic and Arthurs who yield 6-8 inches of their own to Karlovic and Isner but still manage to rival Ivo in % of aces/1st serves and (Wayne here is an educated guess) % of 1st serves unreturned, and even top John in both stats.
Unsurprisingly both of the near giraffes are lefties with wicked disguise. In fact Wayne's got a particular shout-out from Ivo himself who singled out the southpaw as the toughest server he ever faced:
Moral of the story: next time you see a know-nothing pontificate on how a left-handed and/or hard-to-read service motion can't compensate for height, walk away.
It's really puzzling how anyone who's generally sane about most matters in tennis and public health can be so deranged when it comes to his political grievances.
But yeah, pretty much. But your 2nd sentence still doesn't tell the whole story. See below.
K you asked for it (again):
See below #2.
Yes, broken only 4 times in 7 finals with over 50% of all serves won outright and an even higher average hold rate than in all rounds combined:
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
Which brings us to....
If you're including Nick in that group then the most (statistically) impressive members by far are Ivanisevic and Arthurs who yield 6-8 inches of their own to Karlovic and Isner but still manage to rival Ivo in % of aces/1st serves and (Wayne here is an educated guess) % of 1st serves unreturned, and even top John in both stats.
Unsurprisingly both of the near giraffes are lefties with wicked disguise. In fact Wayne's got a particular shout-out from Ivo himself who singled out the southpaw as the toughest server he ever faced:
Moral of the story: next time you see a know-nothing pontificate on how a left-handed and/or hard-to-read service motion can't compensate for height, walk away.
It's really puzzling how anyone who's generally sane about most matters in tennis and public health can be so deranged when it comes to his political grievances.
But yeah, pretty much. But your 2nd sentence still doesn't tell the whole story. See below.
K you asked for it (again):
See below #2.
Yes, broken only 4 times in 7 finals with over 50% of all serves won outright and an even higher average hold rate than in all rounds combined:
Greatest Serves of All Time
You might be thinking of this (as the vid description says, perhaps the 1st big USO upset of the new millennium): Anyhoo Arthurs is definitely up there. FYI @slice serve ace once looked at the % of aces/1st-serve points (which makes sense, as pretty much anyone not named Sampras earns most of...
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
1999 Sampras vs 1980 Borg at wimbledon
Assuming both had graphite racquets. best of five set match. on the pre 2001 grass. before they slowed it down.
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
Which brings us to....
NonP
Legend
Here's the thing about the storied "Sampras serve": it means so many different things to so many people it's virtually impossible to say which takes are accurate or not unless we agree on exactly what we're talking about.
So let's untangle its GOATness once and for all. Y'all know the drill about separating serves and service games. You might even know about the ATP's double counting of aces and DFs for most '90s Slam matches, which along with rising service stats (from increasingly bigger racquets and greater spin thanks to poly) renders comparisons with '90s guys using the ATP database all but moot.
That means we need other frames of reference. Thankfully TA has its own database from hundreds of charted matches:
Pay particular attention to the Unret% on 1st serves - a quick primer on URS% if you need it - which is a better barometer of serving prowess than most as just about everyone goes for aces/freebies on 1sts and, unlike with the overall URS%, we don't need to worry too much about how to adjust for 1st-serve % and serving strategy based on racquets, opponents, etc. (Hence the ingeniousness - h/t @slice serve ace - of the aforementioned ace % on 1st serves, since almost all aces come off 1sts.) So Pistol is ranked high as expected, even higher than Raonic, Kyrgios and Roddick, but still well below Ivanisevic, Karlovic, Opelka, Krajicek and Isner - plus Arthurs who, again, likely vies with Goran and Ivo for the throne. That's 6 from the last 30 years alone, which is why this Pistolite readily acknowledges that, as a stand-alone shot, Sampras' 1st serve may not even make the top 10 of the Open Era, let alone all time. (Denton and Zivojinovic would be up there, and perhaps Philippoussis and J. Johansson though real/perceived unreliability and lack of data, respectively, do give me some pause. And going further back Stoefen, Vines, Falkenburg and Big Pancho would possibly/probably edge out my boy thanks to their height advantage.)
Which brings us to that vaunted 2nd serve. A quick glance at TA's Unret% on 2nds might leave you underwhelmed as Pete's 23.1%, while still stellar, places him not only behind the usual suspects of Ivo, Reilly, John, Goran, Rick plus Rafter (unexpected) and Stich (not so much) but also behind virtual journeymen like Brown, Bublik, Herbert and Cressy, who improbably but understandably claims the top spot at a whopping 43.2%. (FYI Nick currently averages 23.4%, so pretty much tied with Pistol.) So does that mean Sampras' much-hyped 2nd serve is in fact grossly overrated and Cressy's almost twice as good?
Not even close. First off consider just how low these %s are, which should tell you that even ATG servers, with good reason, don't go for 1st-ish serves on most 2nds because they know it's a low-% play. Maxime is indeed one big and probably historic exception, and while I like to repeat my genius irony that today's players should be hitting more DFs, even I'm not so sure that DFing on almost 10% of all SPs is a viable tactic for anyone (yes, even a limited player like Cressy) considering how close many of these matches are. It's fair to say that UR% on 2nd serves is but one measure of their strength and nobody should fixate on it to the exclusion of everything else.
Also some of you TTW veterans might recall moi paying close attention to Karlovic's '15 Wimbledon run where he fired an absurd 41.25 aces/match. (FYI his 0.293 aces/SP still fell short of '01 Goran's 0.309% through 4R, but he did post a likely career-best 0.318 and an overall 0.312 at '09 Wimby. Let's just say Goran's own Wimby career was more up and down.) I still remember him averaging almost 120 mph on 2nd serves (believe it was 118) - at least comparable, after adjusting for radar gun tech, to Sampras clocking in at 110 mph at '01 Wimby - which lends credence to the view that he's the one who holds the "legitimate" TA record with a 32.2% average of unreturned 2nds and, in turn, his 2nd serve is in fact as good as Pistol's more renowned counterpart, if not even better.
But I can also say this: never once did I feel Karlovic could uncork that feared 2nd-serve ace at will on big points, and I'm sure almost all of us who followed both Ivo's and Pistol's careers would agree. Also we know for a fact that Pete's corrected %s of career 2nd-serve points won (since '91) were great but not extraordinary, which tells me there are other forces at work here.
So you could say the best way to judge 2nd serves is not how many 2nd-serve points you win per se, but rather how often you can rain down those big 2nd serves when necessary. Ditto on 1sts. And when do you desperately need these big serves? At the biggies aka the Slams, of course!
Now it's virtually impossible to quantify that metric for the '90s guys due to said double counting of aces/DFs, but here's where another oft-overlooked stat comes in handy, courtesy of UTS this time (h/t @rick kerr):
Corrected %s of In-Play Service Points Won at the Majors
So this is that rarest of days... when you jokers are actually better than useless and find something new. That something comes from @rick kerr who astutely noted that UTS's Svc. In-play Pts. Won % - which excludes, naturally, aces and DFs - is another term/equation for % of rallies won on...
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
As you can see Pistol is just about the only stud (since '91) whose % of in-play service points won off clay doesn't drop as you move up the rounds, which in fact rises to a stunning 72.8% in his 14 Slam finals won. Of course this is where you come back and say that's cuz Pete has the best service game as opposed to the best serve, which certainly sounds plausible as even Arthurs and Karlovic are stuck at #15 and #16 (or #14 and #11 if you include RG). So close but no cigar, right?
Not so fast, because that explanation fails to account for the fact that Pistol also leads the Big 3 after all aces are discounted. Even the biggest Sampras partisans would be hard-pressed to argue that his ground game, as good as it was, would be up there with Fedalovic's after equalizing for all possible conditions, and let's not forget Pete would be getting more 1st serves in today which would boost his lead even further. Then what are you left with? That's right, a truckload of unreturned serves (without aces though with also works) and weak replies. And we know his 1st serve wasn't quite the best of the best.
Now you see why that 2nd serve remains the stuff of legend. It's true that in terms of day-to-day GPA Pistol usually didn't stand out next to the servebots, because he didn't need to go all out in every match. But when he did... you were probably witnessing the single greatest hold machine in tennis history, and he has that GOAT weapon to thank, not only for his cruise control on serve but also for his well-known (and now proven) penchant for coasting in his return games.
We tend to chalk up his big-match rep to clutchness, mental strength or something outside the physical realm, but the truth of the matter is, no athlete's mentality can be completely separated from the rest of his game and Sampras is probably the best example I can think of. His legendary "clutchness" comes from not just his neocortex but also the very fact that his GOAT serve/service game allows him to take those big risks which would be borderline suicide for most other players. Put another way, those 2nd-serve aces or 2nd-S&Vs on BPs are relatively low-% plays even for Pistol - but those %s were higher for him than for anyone else.
Put 'em all together and you've got the BOAT (K off clay, if you insist). And yes, the GSOAT package, as long as you understand what you mean by it.
NonP
Legend
I was trying to get that essay under the limit and inevitably missed/skipped a couple extra points/links I was gonna sneak in:
- Here are Pistol's corrected %s of 2nd-serve points won by year (from '92-99 as '91 was somehow free of the duplicate aces/DFs), along with those of several other top '90s guys:
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
A "tremendous effort" indeed from @slice serve ace. Hope you'll come back, buddy!
- It's unlikely we'll see another Sampras in our lifetime. His serve may have been singled out by countless pros as the most technically perfect shot in tennis history, but despite or perhaps for that very reason his service motion is practically impossible to copy for mere mortals without his freakishly strong and flexible shoulder. (I've shared this story before but what the hey: an old bud of mine once tried to do just that and hurt himself so bad he was out for weeks!) The BOAT truly was one of a kind.
- TL;DR version of the above dissertation aka Kramer's timeless motto: you're only as good as your second serve. (Take note, Sascha.)
- The more I think about my reply to @ChrisJR3264 the more I lean towards the admittedly bold yet tenable view that it is Arthurs who boasts (considered in isolation) the best pound-for-pound serve ever, if not the very best period. After all the guy is even shorter than Goran (per the listed heights) but can still go toe to toe with him and his compatriot Ivo in % of aces/1st serves and (again most likely - see below) % of 1st serves unreturned. Something of a miracle, really.
So how did he do it? Ivo touched on it in that interview but Wayne can thank his sheer variety, arguably the best among the ATG botters. As some of you already know Goran didn't really have a kicker and even refrained from flat serves except when going out wide on the deuce court which as a lefty flummoxed everyone (I'd say most of his down-the-Ts were his patented slicers). But Wayne? "Supreme master of all serves" (to quote Elly's glowing praise for good ol' Jack in his book), and he'd mix 'em up a la Rafter which led Pistol to share the startling admission (in his own book) that the Aussie daredevil gave him fits and he actually preferred to play Edberg cuz at least you knew exactly what was coming. (Old-timers might recall @FiveO's quip about Stefan's flats clocking in at 111 mph ad nauseam. Granted they'd register around 125 mph today.) And I bet Wayne called on the underutilized body serve more than Goran or Ivo... again just like his countryman Pat!
- That said Goran's still gets my nod as the best stand-alone (1st) serve ever. He didn't really need a kicker cuz (I'm 99% positive) his slice serve remains unmatched in history. And his lightning-fast motion was probably even more unreadable than Wayne's.
- It is that unreadability plus lefty spin which allows Goran and Wayne to make up for Ivo's big height advantage. Great as the Karlovic serve was, having had "no idea where he was going to hit it" is not something you're likely to hear from his opponents.
- Switch Krajicek's hands and he possibly challenges Goran/Wayne/Ivo for the top spot, or at least matches Reilly in both %s. Not quite as unreadable as Goran, but close with probably a little more power thrown in.
- Guess no one should be surprised but it really is uncanny how closely % of aces/1st serves tracks Unret% on 1sts and vice versa. Apart from alerting us and possibly the tennis world to the importance of URS% - here's an extraordinary article from 1933(!) exhumed by @krosero back in '15, to give y'all an inkling as to how richer tennis scorekeeping could've been from the get-go - that connection may well be ssa's best discovery and from this point on the 1st-serve ace % should be the go-to substitute for its counterpart which is still hard to come by.
Of course there are a few exceptions, Pistol being by far the biggest one (that we know of). To a lesser extent, A-Rod and... Querrey, whose 0.263 aces/1st serve (as of Oct 2021) puts him in the same ballpark as Kyrgios and Muller but whose 54.0% of unret. 1sts lifts him well above those two and just below Krajicek and Isner. Could be the sample size which currently stands at 34 charted matches, but I'll be keeping a closer eye going forward.
On the flip side is Raonic whose 1st-serve ace % (30.6% as of Aug '14) is belied by his somewhat underwhelming URS% on 1sts (52.1% per TA). And with 79 charted matches this can't be an egregious case of selection bias. Is there something that we (or at least moi) don't know about?
That's all for now. Will follow up if I think of more worth sharing. You're welcome.
- Here are Pistol's corrected %s of 2nd-serve points won by year (from '92-99 as '91 was somehow free of the duplicate aces/DFs), along with those of several other top '90s guys:
2nd serve pts won for 1992-1999 - corrected stats
those not familliar with the issue can read through this thread http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=207411 and this grand slam matches on atp site, for whatever reason, counted aces and double faults twice from 1992 untill US Open 1999...from that tournament on stats are...
tt.tennis-warehouse.com
A "tremendous effort" indeed from @slice serve ace. Hope you'll come back, buddy!
- It's unlikely we'll see another Sampras in our lifetime. His serve may have been singled out by countless pros as the most technically perfect shot in tennis history, but despite or perhaps for that very reason his service motion is practically impossible to copy for mere mortals without his freakishly strong and flexible shoulder. (I've shared this story before but what the hey: an old bud of mine once tried to do just that and hurt himself so bad he was out for weeks!) The BOAT truly was one of a kind.
- TL;DR version of the above dissertation aka Kramer's timeless motto: you're only as good as your second serve. (Take note, Sascha.)
- The more I think about my reply to @ChrisJR3264 the more I lean towards the admittedly bold yet tenable view that it is Arthurs who boasts (considered in isolation) the best pound-for-pound serve ever, if not the very best period. After all the guy is even shorter than Goran (per the listed heights) but can still go toe to toe with him and his compatriot Ivo in % of aces/1st serves and (again most likely - see below) % of 1st serves unreturned. Something of a miracle, really.
So how did he do it? Ivo touched on it in that interview but Wayne can thank his sheer variety, arguably the best among the ATG botters. As some of you already know Goran didn't really have a kicker and even refrained from flat serves except when going out wide on the deuce court which as a lefty flummoxed everyone (I'd say most of his down-the-Ts were his patented slicers). But Wayne? "Supreme master of all serves" (to quote Elly's glowing praise for good ol' Jack in his book), and he'd mix 'em up a la Rafter which led Pistol to share the startling admission (in his own book) that the Aussie daredevil gave him fits and he actually preferred to play Edberg cuz at least you knew exactly what was coming. (Old-timers might recall @FiveO's quip about Stefan's flats clocking in at 111 mph ad nauseam. Granted they'd register around 125 mph today.) And I bet Wayne called on the underutilized body serve more than Goran or Ivo... again just like his countryman Pat!
- That said Goran's still gets my nod as the best stand-alone (1st) serve ever. He didn't really need a kicker cuz (I'm 99% positive) his slice serve remains unmatched in history. And his lightning-fast motion was probably even more unreadable than Wayne's.
- It is that unreadability plus lefty spin which allows Goran and Wayne to make up for Ivo's big height advantage. Great as the Karlovic serve was, having had "no idea where he was going to hit it" is not something you're likely to hear from his opponents.
- Switch Krajicek's hands and he possibly challenges Goran/Wayne/Ivo for the top spot, or at least matches Reilly in both %s. Not quite as unreadable as Goran, but close with probably a little more power thrown in.
- Guess no one should be surprised but it really is uncanny how closely % of aces/1st serves tracks Unret% on 1sts and vice versa. Apart from alerting us and possibly the tennis world to the importance of URS% - here's an extraordinary article from 1933(!) exhumed by @krosero back in '15, to give y'all an inkling as to how richer tennis scorekeeping could've been from the get-go - that connection may well be ssa's best discovery and from this point on the 1st-serve ace % should be the go-to substitute for its counterpart which is still hard to come by.
Of course there are a few exceptions, Pistol being by far the biggest one (that we know of). To a lesser extent, A-Rod and... Querrey, whose 0.263 aces/1st serve (as of Oct 2021) puts him in the same ballpark as Kyrgios and Muller but whose 54.0% of unret. 1sts lifts him well above those two and just below Krajicek and Isner. Could be the sample size which currently stands at 34 charted matches, but I'll be keeping a closer eye going forward.
On the flip side is Raonic whose 1st-serve ace % (30.6% as of Aug '14) is belied by his somewhat underwhelming URS% on 1sts (52.1% per TA). And with 79 charted matches this can't be an egregious case of selection bias. Is there something that we (or at least moi) don't know about?
That's all for now. Will follow up if I think of more worth sharing. You're welcome.
BeatlesFan
Bionic Poster
I won't disagree, I can't stand Mouratoglou either. But he's been at M's tennis Academy since 2016. They've only been officially a team since October, hopefully he dumps him like Dimi and Tsitsipas have done.
Fed's 1st serve didn't have the pace and movement of the top servers. If he didn't hit his spot perfectly, it was returnable. It's hard to say who's the best because there are so many factors, including whether the rest of their game helped them more/less in holding serve. But I don't see how Kyrgios is better than Roddick. Roddick's 2nd serve is clearly better than K's and he consistently hung around the top 5 when the rest of his game was generally worse than everyone in the top 5 or 10. I'll repeat it here again - Roddick's serve, in some ways, was a little underrated. I've never seen any player, before or after, who served with that much pace and with that much consistency. He was regularly hitting 65%-70% first serve while going for 130+ mph 1st serves.
Third Serve
Talk Tennis Guru
It’s pretty crazy the percentages he was hitting while maintaining that pace.
WayneBretsky
Rookie
This dude consistently says some of the dumbest stuff, I’m convinced it’s to stay relevant.
Bobby Jr
G.O.A.T.
Care to name them please?
I watched tennis through his whole career and his serve was consistently the best of his era - better than Ivanisevic, Rusedski, Rosset etc. who were great servers but not consistently as great year-round.
Bobby Jr
G.O.A.T.
Bingo. Mouratoglou is a bit of a bonehead across many tennis topics. It looks a little like Nick Bollettieri who drank too much of his own Kool-Aid despite never actually being a top-level coach of top players. Mouratoglou feels the same. His views on on-court coaching were laughably one-eyed as an example, and his short Instagram videos on technique are often so bad it's amazing.
He thinks he's a visionary but really he's a decent coach who is primarily a highly motivated businessman.
I kinda agree but these days, I don't think people understand how much of a tennis genius Bolletieri was. On a micro level-teaching strokes, specific game plans, he wasn't elite. But on a macro level, Nick B was revolutionary. Before Nick B, the way to be a good tennis player was to continue to improve so that you had no weakness and could hit every stroke well. Then Bolletieri comes along and says screw that: just bash the ball harder than the other guy and it won't matter. He/she won't have enough time or be in position hit approach shots or volley. And it worked. Agassi, Courier, Seles all would be considered incomplete in the traditional sense because they were mostly allergic to the net (really in their careers), didn't slice that well but they got to the top anyway. Nick also didn't really try to pass himself off as a tennis savant. He openly admitted that he was a crappy player. Yes, he still believed he knew lots about tennis but he didn't have the smugness that Mort has.
Mouratoglou, is much less impressive. His pro tips generally amount to nothing more than "just relax a bit and you'll hit harder." Not wrong but not exactly insightful for intermediate or advanced players. I guess he sounds impressive because he says common things with a French accent
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