Fastest recorded tennis serves


This article lists the fastest record serve speeds for men's and women's professional tennis.
The fastest, biggest recorded serve is by Sam Groth, at 263.4 km/h at a Challenger event. The fastest recorded serve at an ATP event was by John Isner, at 253.0 km/h in the first round of the 2016 Davis Cup.
This list is not historically complete. There are reports from the 1920s, at a time when service motions were regulated differently, that Bill Tilden had a serve that was clocked at 262.81 km/h but there is nothing to verify that. "Big Bill" Tilden also delivered another serve claimed to be officially measured at 163.61 mph in 1931. Britain's Mike Sangster had a serve allegedly timed at 154 mph in 1963. Ellsworth Vines was clocked at 128 mph and his 1930s contemporary Lester Rollo Stoeten sent down a serve timed at 131 mph. Also, Ellsworth Vines in the Wimbledon finals of 1932 clocked 194.73 km/h . The fastest serve claimed to be scientifically timed was the 137 mph serve from Scott Carnahan at Los Angeles in 1976. Udayachand Shetty's winning serve was clocked by radar at 193.12 km/h using a wooden racquet, at the Gilbey Gins fast serve contest held in Chicago on 24 July 1976. This qualified him to take part in the finals at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills Queens on 20 August 1976. Colin Dibley won the event with a serve of 209.21 km/h. Then in 1981 a West German lawn tennis coach and statistician, Horst Goepper, claimed a serving speed of 199.53 mph during a test in Weinheim.
Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard with a 237 km/h second serve in the first round of 2025 Wimbledon Championships, holds the record for the fastest second serve ever recorded.
;Criteria to be listed in this article
  • Men's serves must be recorded at or over minimum standard speed.
  • Women's serves must be recorded at or over minimum standard speed.
  • Only one serve per player is recorded here. For example, Andy Roddick has several or faster serves on his record but only his personal best of is included.
  • In cases where more than one serve has been recorded at the same speed, the oldest recorded serve is listed first.

Men

RankPlayerMax reportedEventTypeRoundRef.Non-outlier maxAverage first serve
1convert|147.0|mph|km/h|1|abbr=on|order=flipconvert|123.0|mph|km/h|1|abbr=on|order=flip

Women

The WTA doesn't keep official serve speed rankings of its own for all its events for a variety of reasons—mainly that serve speed isn't captured on every court at every tournament, and sometimes the technology being used isn't consistent from event to event. The Women's Tennis Association does have an external partner that it officially recognizes which measures and maintains serve speed data at selected number of events. It does not recognize at all, nor keep tabs of speed records set outside the main draw phase of WTA Tour tournaments. Therefore, serve speeds recorded from the qualifying phase of WTA tournaments are not added to the official WTA serve speed statistics. Also WTA tournament serve speeds recorded by different measurement systems or brands that are not using technology provided by ATP/WTA's official supplier or partner, or speeds recorded at any of the non-WTA professional women's tournaments such as the ITF Women's Circuit, the Fed Cup, and Olympics tennis are not added to WTA's official list of records.
RankPlayerSpeedEventRef.
1convert|220|km/h|mph|1|abbr=on