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WIMBLEDON — Over the course of seven stunning days, it has become the most lethal shot in tennis.
It’s a serve which comes off the racket of a French 21-year-old named Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, and the player waiting for it needs to hit it back over the net.
Or, get, cajole, persuade, will, pray it back over.
It’s a rocket blast that can be hard to see, much less get a racket on, let alone return over a piece of mesh 3ft high from 39ft away.
As for making a quality return to take control of a point, or doing it enough times to win a game when Mpetshi Perricard is serving? For seven days, that looked like an impossibility for everyone in the draw.
Except, maybe, for the one player left in the draw who already knows how to pick the Mpetshi Perricard service lock. He’s another Frenchman, a year younger than Mpetshi Perricard, who is having the breakout Grand Slam run that so many have been expecting of him for more than a year.
That would be Arthur Fils, Mpetshi Perricard’s best friend since the two…
Some numbers. Mpetshi Perricard, who is 6 ft 8 (203cm), has hit 105 aces in three matches, including 51 in his first-round win over Sebastian Korda, No. 20 seed here at the All England Club and one of the world’s better grass court players.
