By Tennis Now | @TennisNow | Friday, February 14, 2025
Picture credit score: Patrick Hamilton/AFP/Getty
Tennis balls can be endangered species when Reilly Opelka faces Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard for title of world’s quickest server.
Two of the sport’s largest servers will sq. off Sunday, March 2 in The Ace Problem Offered by Michelob ULTRA to earn the title of the sport’s quickest serve. The winner will take house a money prize as a part of the The MGM Rewards Slam weekend at Michelob ULTRA Area at Mandalay Bay Resort and On line casino in Las Vegas.
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The 27-year-old Opelka seems to be to make his manner again up the ATP Tour rankings, the place he reached a profession excessive No. 17 in 2022, following practically two years off attributable to damage. Sooner or later after upsetting all-time males’s Grand Slam wins chief Novak Djokovic on the Brisbane Worldwide to start out the 12 months, Opelka downed Perricard within the semifinals earlier than pulling out of the ultimate attributable to a again damage.
The six-foot-eight, 21-year-old Mpetshi Perricard had a breakout 12 months in 2024 and owns a present career-high ATP rating of No. 30. He leads the ATP Tour with a median of 19.3 aces per match and is at present ranked No. 1 with a 302.1 service ranking. He made headlines earlier within the 12 months with a booming 144 miles-per-hour serve. Final 12 months at Wimbledon, he cracked 51 aces in a single match.
In Saturday’s foremost occasion, girls’s World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka will face off in opposition to former No. 1 Naomi Osaka for the coveted Lion’s Cup. Sabalenka, the current Australian Open finalist from Belarus, is a three-time Grand Slam singles champion whereas Japan’s Osaka has earned 4 Grand Slam titles, together with her first two back-to-back on the 2018 U.S. Open and 2019 Australian Open.
In Sunday’s motion, males’s World No. 1 Jannik Sinner, No. 2-ranked Alexander Zverev and People Taylor Fritz and Tommy Paul, ranked Nos. 4 and 9, respectively, will take part in a four-player round-robin occasion utilizing 10-point tiebreakers. The 2 gamers with the best factors will compete in a Championship Tiebreak for the boys’s model of the Lion’s Cup.
Tickets are on sale now through axs.com. Single-day tickets begin at $55 and two-day tickets at $127.50, not together with relevant service expenses or charges.
