Wimbledon's fastest EVER server! 6'8' French star Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard breaks a 15-year record TWO times in one match - and could be the man for today's big upset

On Wimbledon's intimidating show courts, some tennis matches start slow and build to their thrilling crescendo. Not so, number-five seed Taylor Fritz's clash with world No36 Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard on Monday evening. 

The Frenchman opened service on No1 Court. Bang! With his opening offering, the 21-year-old shattered the Wimbledon record, with his 149mph serve the fastest in SW19 history. 

That beat American Taylor Dent's effort from 2010 by one mile. A record is a record, so the difference might not have been a minor detail. But it appeared to matter to Mpetshi Perricard. 

Bang! Just two points later, Mtpeshi Perricard bettered it by some measure, with his 156mph serve the new pace setter that his rivals could only hope to blast across the net to their opponents. 

If Boris Becker's serve earned him the nickname Boom Boom, Mpetshi Perricard has made his case for becoming Sonic Boom. 

The serve is the singular component of the Frenchman's game, standing head and shoulders above most of his weapons, and with his cannon arm, Mpetshi Perricard went some way to breaking the resistance of Fritz in the opening two sets. Almost impervious to being broken, the 6ft8 star claimed the first set via tiebreak, and then the second. 

But while Fritz found his breakthrough in the third set, Mpetshi Perricard continued to demonstrate the chasm of talent between his prodigious service game and the rest of the firepower in his arsenal. But with the match called ahead of the Wimbledon 11am curfew at two sets apiece, Mpetshi Perricard could yet make Fritz one of the few players to lose a Grand Slam match without having his service game broken. 

His serve is not without jeopardy, with Mpetshi Perricard serving up 11 double faults on Monday night to Fritz's zero, but when his first serve was averageing 137mph and his second 122mph, and there were 33 aces in across the first four sets, there are clearly risks Mpetshi Perricard is willing to take. 

'I'm different - I'm tall. I'm huge, I will say,' Mpetshi Perricard said matter-of-factly about his big serving game. 'I cannot move like the others so I have to play different to the others to be good.' 

Born in Lyon - and still fiercely devoted to their football team - it makes pleasing sense that service monster Mpetshi Perricard was destined to be an athlete. The 21-year-old, who also goes by the nickname Gio, is the son of two: his father Guylain was a semi-professional football player who turned out for French lower-league teams including FC Bourg Peronnas and  after moving to the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and his mother Sylvie was a former volleyball player. 

The latter in particular has been a major role model for him, with Mpetshi Perricard describing her as his 'hero' in an interview last year. 

Sylvie fostered her son's love of tennis and was instrumental in encouraging him to begin residential training at the French Tennis Federation at the age of 12. 

Just five years later, Mpetshi Perricard was rising through the junior ranks, winning French Open doubles with his compatriot - and current French No1 - Arthur Fils, and reaching the semi-finals in the junior singles at his home Grand Slam. 

By 2023, Mpetshi Perricard was tearing up the Challenger tour, winning the Leon Open in Mexico as his ranking steadily moved him up into the top 200, then the three more Challengers the following year, and his first ATP title in his back garden - the Lyon Open. 

That run on home soil was particularly remarkable, with Mpetshi Perricard scything through seeded stars such as Alexander Bublik and Tomas Martin Etcheverry. But while the Frenchman was impressive on clay, tennis fans quickly learned that he was punishing on grass. 

Wimbledon 2025 marks the second time in two years that Mpetshi Perricard has made a splash at the All England Club. He had arrived in London earlier that summer and announced himself by downing American star Ben Shelton at Queen's. But it looked like he would have to book a Eurostar back to his home country after he was knocked out in qualifying for the Championships. 

Instead, Mpetshi Perricard squeaked into the main draw as a lucky loser. Matched up against 20th-seed Sebastian Korda, he proceeded to blast him off the court.   

 'There wasn't much to do, just guess where the ball was going,' said Korda. 'At one point, he had 80 percent first serves in for only one double fault.'

It took five sets, but Mpetshi Perricard was through, and his victim in the third round, Emil Ruusuvuori, was keen to warn future rivals of what was coming for them.  

'A very tricky, tricky opponent on this surface, especially,' he said. 'He's still I believe going to improve even more. The wind didn't really bother his game that much.'

While Mpetshi Perricard was knocked out on his 21st birthday by Lorenzo Musetti, he left the capital with a shiny new ranking which catapulted him into the top 50. In the months since, he has claimed an ATP 500 title in Basel, and although his form has dipped, raised spirits with a Challenger title win in Bordeaux in May. 

As well as drawing on the support parents, Mpetshi Perricard has also sought to emulate French sporting greats to learn about navigating the slings and arrow of the tour, including Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils. 

Useful too is another Mpetshi Perricard on the tennis circuit, with his 16-year-old sister Daphnee making her qualifying draw debut at Roland-Garros this year. 

But most important are friends like his former partner Fils, who shared last year that they speak all the time. 

'We are always texting,' Fils revealed. 'We see each other every day. We are going out for dinner almost every day.' 

Fritz is fast making a name for himself as an enemy to Frenchmen everywhere - first after being roundly booed at Roland-Garros after biting back at the crowd during his defeat of home favourite Arthur Rinderknech, and then last year in SW19, after he was involved in an angry confrontation with Rinderknech which saw the American tell him to 'enjoy his flight home'. His tangle with Mpetshi Perricard is unlikely to change this. 

After their match was called off for the night, Fritz, who reached the semi-finals last year and has eyes on a deep run after winning Eastbourne last week, was bullish on social media that he had been keen to keep going. 

'They would've let us play if my opponent agreed to,' he told a fan in a social media comment. 'I said I wanted to, he didn't'.

Sportsmanlike or not, Mpetshi Perricard had the right mentality in his determination to halt Fritz's growing momentum, the number-five seed having screamed and sweared in delight after claiming the equalising fourth set. 

But there lies additional threat for Fritz in the decision to return to court for the deciding set on Tuesday. Mpetshi Perricard will have been able to rest his monstrous serving arm.