John Isner, the Wimbledon record holder, has become the player with the most aces in tennis history

A serve in the third match of the first set of a third round match in a secondary stadium of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. One play among the many that Wimbledon offers every day. Or not. Because that serve that froze the Italian Jannik Sinner allowed the American John Isner to break the record for aces in the history of professional tennis.

The 37-year-old American veteran was assumed to have hit the magic number this Friday, the only uncertainty being how quickly he would do it. He only required two matches of service. When the match was 1-1 and 15-30, he hit a tee that became his fifth ace of the game and 13,729 of his long professional career, which began in 2007.

The player born in Greensboro (North Carolina) has thus crossed the threshold of 13,728 held by Ivo Karlovic, who retired last year, even if the Croatian took 694 games to reach that figure, while Isner surpassed it in his 737th match. in the men’s circuit. The ATP began developing this statistic in 1991.

“It’s really great. It’s something I’m very proud of. I’ll be the all-time leader, I’ll keep playing and increasing my total. I don’t know if (this record) will ever be broken. It could stay up there for a long time.” had predicted the American giant (he is 2.08 meters tall) before the match against Sinner.

Isner achieved this by making serve the main weapon of his tennis. In seven seasons he has been the player who has scored the most aces and has also crossed the threshold of 1,000 unstoppable serves in a year seven times (he reached 1,260 in 2015). He is also the leader in that department this year, with 629 ahead of the game on Friday. “His service is the best in history. I would have swapped mine for him without thinking twice, ”another prominent server, former world number one Andy Roddick assured Thursday on his Twitter account.

Thanks to this nightmare blow for his opponents, the University of Georgia-trained player, who finished 24th and finished eighth in 2018, won 92% of his career service games and 79% of the points. played with his first serve.

Although this Friday the 24 aces scored against Sinner were not enough, as the Italian defeated him 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) and 6-3 in two hours and 20 minutes of play. In this way, the tenth seeded of the race progressed to the round of 16, in which case he will face the fifth seeded of the race, the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who left the German Oscar Otte on the road.

The aces record he broke this Friday is not Isner’s first all-time record on the Wimbledon lawn. In 2010 he played and won the longest match in the history of professional tennis: he defeated the French 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7-9), 7-6 (7-3) and 70-68 Nicolas Mahut in a first-round duel that lasted 11 hours and 5 minutes, spread over three days of play (between 22 and 24 June). In that duel, Isner scored 113 aces.