Tennis is full of debates on who is the best in this or that.
There is a plethora of contenders for the guy with the best serve. The winner is definitely Karlovic!
The giant from Croatia has managed to climb up the rankings (no.14 was his career high) thanks to a devastating serve and a “not-so-devastating” baseline tennis. But is there any evidence to back that Ivo has the best serve in tennis history? Yes we have 3 stats.
Aces
If you analyze this table with the average aces per match, Karlovic (height 2.08 m) leads the rest of the pack comfortably with 18.7 aces per match followed by Isner (2.08 m), Raonic (1.96 m) and Philippoussis (1.96 m), Krajicek (1.96 m). Roger is only no.18th in this stat. (we guess height helps…isn’t that true?)
1st Serve Points won
Probably the most important statistic is the percentage of first serve points won and also in this case Ivo is the King with 83% points won after his 1st serve. Roger is “just” no. 21
Percentage of service games won
Finally Ivo is also no.1 in the percentage of Service game won (91%), while Federer is no.6.
This is our evidence.
Roger is arguably the best tennis player in history, but in terms of serving… we think that Ivo is the King.
