Tennis strokes can be learned and practiced, but athletes can't influence some things, such as their height.
Without a doubt, service is one of the most important shots in tennis. It's the only shot that the player has 100% control over, and that's what makes it so powerful. However, some players are good at utilizing their serve and profiting from it, while others fight for every point on their service games.
The determining factor is often the height as players that are higher usually serve much better thanks to obvious advantage. On the other hand, those players usually struggle with longer rallies as tennis is quite a difficult sport to play for high players for various reasons.
Famous tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou, who mentored the likes of Serena Williams, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Simona Halep, often offers insights and his perspective on the world of tennis, and now he did once again.
This time, the French coach, who currently works with Holger Rune, talked about serves and picked his Top 5.
According to Mouratoglou, Pete Sampras is the fifth-best server in tennis history. In his career, Sampras hit 8,858 aces in 792 matches, and he won 88,74% of his service games.
"Pete had the most unpredictable and unreadable serve both on first and second."
One of the most successful servers in the sport's history is Ivo Karlovic. The Croat has the highest success rate on his serve, winning 92% of games, and he's one of the very few players who hit more than 10,000 aces in their career. Karlovic is 2nd with 13,728 aces. Mouratoglou put him in fourth place.
"Thanks to his height (Ivo Karlovic), he made a great career mostly based on his serve."
Andy Roddick was known for his powerful serve and during his career, the American hit 9,074 aces. Thanks to his 'violent way' of hitting, Mouratoglou placed him third.
"Andy had the most violent way to hit a serve in the tennis history."
There is no doubt that John Isner is one of the best servers ever. Recently, the tall American broke the world record for most aces hit as his count is currently at 14,186. According to the French coach, he's the second-best ever.
"He played the longest match in tennis history and he wasn't broken for eight hours in a row."
As number 1, Mouratoglou picked Nick Kyrgios. In 2022, the Australian hit 747 aces in 47 matches, placing himself fifth on the ATP Tour. However, when it came to games won on serve, no one was close to Kyrgios as he won 92,88% of those.
"Kyrgios is number one because players return much better today and he's undoubtedly the current best."