Giovanni’s Serve Is From The Andromeda Galaxy

[jimlosaltos]

I posted about Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard's serve under the Wimbledon thread, but it deserves one of its own.
In case you missed it, Perricard hit 51 aces in his first round match vs Seb Korda, including 8 on his second serve.

Here is a composite image of the 6 ft 8 in Frenchman's service and description from Craig O'Shannessy, who deserves a link for all this.

Craig: "Perricard has one of the best serves this sport has seen." and later "His serve is from another galaxy – probably Andromeda." "Standing 6’8″ (203 cm) and 216 lbs (98 kg) stood Giovanni. Man mountain. My jaw hit the floor. He looked like no tennis player I had ever seen before. He was big, but he was fast."

"It’s so clean, efficient, repeatable, and powerful—the kind of serve that breaks ribs on the other side of the net.." And he likes to serve and volley, moves excellently for his size.

Per prior ATP match, averaged 134 MPH on first serve and 128 MPH on his second, average placement within 60 cm of lines. Low-ish toss for his height, stay up.

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[jimlosaltos]

Here is a link cross-posted from Wimbledon thread, to see some serves from Stuttgart vs Musetti.

https://youtu.be/9DWE7V1UDn0?si=TWLxkWf1a3c4RaBc&t=123

[jimlosaltos]

While we're at it, how to pronounce his name , Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard -- nicknamed "Gio"
By the way, Gio has a one-handed backhand, so there's more to like than his big serve

And here is some background via Wiki

Most recent activity:

In May, at the 2024 ATP Lyon Open, Mpetshi Perricard won his first title on the ATP Tour as a wildcard with wins over Lorenzo Sonego, compatriot and qualifier Hugo Gaston, second seed Alexander Bublik^[12] and sixth seed Tom?s Mart?n Etcheverry in the final.^[13] He became the lowest-ranked titlist in the tournament's history. As a result, he climbed more than 50 spots in the singles rankings to a career-high in the top 70 at world No. 66 on 27 May 2024.^[14] He received a wildcard for the 2024 French Open for the second year in a row,^[15] losing to David Goffin in the first round.

At the beginning of the grass season, he qualified for the 2024 Queen's Club Championships and upset sixth seed Ben Shelton in the first round. As a result he reached the top 60 in the rankings on 24 June 2024. At the 2024 Wimbledon Championships, he entered the main draw as a lucky loser. In the first round, he defeated twentieth seed Sebastian Korda in a five-set match with four tiebreaks, recording his first Major win.^[16][17]

[jimlosaltos]

Gio Perricard was "held" to only 27 aces in his straight set win over Nisioka Thursday/ July 4th

Won 89% of first serve points and wasn't broken although he did face a pair of BPs.

In only 3 sets Gio hit 50 winners. Since Gio won 83 points that means he got over 60% of his points on winners, which is about DOUBLE the ATP average.

And, yet agin, AELTC provides zero speed / serve stats from this court in the hinterland.

Cross-posting with Wimbledon thread.

[stroke]

He is a big strong man. Maybe the first power forward type build in ATP. About the same height as Cheis Eubanks, but 40 or 50 pounds heavier.

[jimlosaltos]

He is a big strong man. Maybe the first power forward type build in ATP. About the same height as Cheis Eubanks, but 40 or 50 pounds heavier.

Yup. In many ways not like the John Isner/ Reilly O'Pelka/ Ivo Karlovic breed of super-tall Serve Bots.

Gio is also pretty fast. Most striking shot from his win over Nishioka wasn't any ace, nor huge forehand (nobody's talking about that forehand yet, but they will).
The shot that stood out to me came when Nishioka hit a delicate drop shot from near the net, the type that travels almost parallel to the net cord and barely above it.
Gio thundered in and not only got it but had the touch to flick it back the way it came with a delicate backhand.

No way any of the Serve Bots would have gotten close to that ball. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly he matures.

[jimlosaltos]

He is a big strong man. Maybe the first power forward type build in ATP. About the same height as Cheis Eubanks, but 40 or 50 pounds heavier.

Stroke, I wonder what you think about his motion.

Reminds me just a bit of a much-smoother version of Berretini's because of the "wrist loading"

Here's what Craig O'Shanessy wrote about the point in Gio's takeback where he points the tip of the racket head toward the ground and forward (3rd frame of photo at to of this thread).
.

• Giovanni’s wrist is quite bent in the third and fourth frames below. He is “pre-loading” his wrist to gain more firepower at the point of contact.

[stroke]

Stroke, I wonder what you think about his motion.

Reminds me just a bit of a much-smoother version of Berretini's because of the "wrist loading"

Here's what Craig O'Shanessy wrote about the point in Gio's takeback where he points the tip of the racket head toward the ground and forward (3rd frame of photo at to of this thread).
.

• Giovanni’s wrist is quite bent in the third and fourth frames below. He is “pre-loading” his wrist to gain more firepower at the point of contact.

He definitely has that explosive fast twitch serve motion, a la Kyrgios, where the ball toss drops a very small amount before contact. He does not hit it at the apex of the toss, but he is close to that. He has the same starting position as Kyrgios, feet wide apart, very closed starting position, and of course quickly brings his back foot up like Kyrgios as he tosses. He has that staggered arm action(tossing arm vs staggered hitting arm), like Kyrgios, and really expodes into the ball. He certainly needs no technique tweaking on his motion. It is a scary serve motion. It looks to be he already has the best serve in tennis, right there with Raonic. And as you say, his forehand is also a real weapon. Very good technique. He uses the Babolat Pure Drive. I certainly don't know if the racquet gives any extra pop, but it is certainly a powerful racquet, too powerful for some to control it seems. Fabio has no problem there though.

[stroke]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CpaHCwCDNT2HEBK37

Updated odds to win Wimbledon.

[jimlosaltos]

He definitely has that explosive fast twitch serve motion, a la Kyrgios, where the ball toss drops a very small amount before contact. He does not hit it at the apex of the toss, but he is close to that. He has the same starting position as Kyrgios, feet wide apart, very closed starting position, and of course quickly brings his back foot up like Kyrgios as he tosses. He has that staggered arm action(tossing arm vs staggered hitting arm), like Kyrgios, and really expodes into the ball. He certainly needs no technique tweaking on his motion. It is a scary serve motion. It looks to be he already has the best serve in tennis, right there with Raonic. And as you say, his forehand is also a real weapon. Very good technique. He uses the Babolat Pure Drive. I certainly don't know if the racquet gives any extra pop, but it is certainly a powerful racquet, too powerful for some to control it seems. Fabio has no problem there though.

When I first saw him play I thought his backhand was bad, with that extremely truncated motion, kind of punching everything. Just no extension at all.

On second thought, I'm wondering if it makes sense for such a tall guy. If he hit his one-handed backhand with the extension of -- Fed, Grigor, Stan, etc -- it would take forever to finish and recover his arms are so long. So, perhaps this is better for him, given the pace of ATP play?

And I saw Gio hit a touch shot, a half-volley backhand lob in the second round that was awesome.

Just wondering?

[stotty]

It's a great serve...really fluid. Always better to have a trailing racket head in the wind-up than a racket head that's stuck up in the air like Alcaraz.

[jimlosaltos]

Although the finals are yet to be held, that shouldn't change the ace stat board much.

So, I grabbed the table and added a column with aces per match for you.

Giovani Mpetshi Perricard, aka Gio is not surprisingly at the top in total aces at 115. But that puts him behind Harris in aces per match 28.8 to a pretty good 32.5. If you include his run in the qualifiers it would be even more impressive since he had, what was it 50-something in his final round loss.

Not half bad for a Lucky Loser !

For context, in 2023 Chris Eubanks led with 102 aces, but that was 20.4/ match, behind Raonic's 49 aces for 25.5 aces/ match.

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[jimlosaltos]

Giovani Mpetshi Perricard aka Gio, led the Wimbledon men in aces with 115, which means he averaged 28.8 aces per match. But, remember, Gio got in as a "lucky loser", meaning he had a week of qualifiers to go through at Wimbledon before the main draw. I think that wore on a player that had only played perhaps one, best-of-five match before in his life. He "only" got 10 aces in his final match, the quarters vs Lorenzo Musetti. By then Gio's first service speed had gone down roughly 9 MPH from a week earlier when he met Musetti in the Stuttgart final, when Gio got 21 aces while losing two tiebreaks to the fellow Italian.

But, let's add in Gio's aces at Wimbledon from the first week. And remarkably, he lost the match where he hit 44 aces.

Gio Aces in Qualifiers
Q3 - 44 aces in 4 sets
Q3 - 20 aces in 2 sets
Q2 - 12 aces in 2 sets
~~~~~
72 aces in 8 sets over 3 matches

Main draw: 115 aces in 4 matches
Total for all his WImbledon matches: 187 aces in 7 matches = 26.7+ aces/ match

For context, second best was Taylor Fritz with 78 aces in 5 matches. Last year, the men's ace leader was Chris Eubanks with 102 aces in 5 matches for 20.4 aces/ match.

Here are the final totals for Ace leaders including the finals.

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[jimlosaltos]

And the ATP updated its complex rating of serve "quality" putting Gio in second place a tenth of a nanometer (whatever unit they use) behind Hubi.

Sinner, given a relatively weak serving performance at Wimbledon slides from second down to fifth.

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[jimlosaltos]

While I was expecting to see Gio rank high on the serve charts, this one surprised.
I guess he has saved a bunch of break points.

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