Serves approaching 150 miles per hour kept on flying past Taylor Fritz.
America’s best men’s hope of an end to a 25-year Wimbledon wait outlasted Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard’s youthful barrage, then lifted his orange racket toward the sky and screamed at the crowd.
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With a little more grass efficiency, Mpetshi Perricard would be in the second round.
But Fritz endured and persevered at No. 1 Court on Monday and Tuesday, winning in five emotional sets, 30 degree heat to finish off Mpetshi Perricard 6-4 in the fifth set a day after the first-round matchup began.
Fritz and Mpetshi Perricard returned to sit next to each other at 3:16 p.m. on Tuesday.
As the young Frenchman held his racket and bounced near the net, Fritz calmly searched through a large bag.
Seven minutes later, appreciative applause echoed and the paused battle resumed.
While reigning French Open champion Coco Gauff entered her first-round match on Tuesday afternoon as America’s best women’s chance to triumph at Wimbledon 2025, Fritz was trying to answer a frustrating overnight delay with a personal statement.
The 27-year-old American entered Wimbledon seeded fifth, and hoping to advance past his previous best quarterfinals finishes in 2022 and ’24.
Mpetshi Perricard employed blazing speed to try and wreck that hope.
The 21-year-old from France turned his 6ft 8in frame into an on-court weapon, setting a new Wimbledon record for the fastest serve in history at 153 miles per hour.
Fritz dropped the initial two sets 7-6 (6), 7-6 (8) as Monday set an opening-day heat record.
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Then he battled back to take the next two sets 6-4, 7-6 (6).
The California native pumped himself up as he attempted to turn 2-0 into 3-2 in the first round.
“Let’s f****** go, come on,” said Fritz, after a successful set-point shot flipped a 5-1 deficit in the fourth.
Then the tense Monday match became Tuesday’s must-see event.
“Ladies and gentlemen, due to the late time of the day, we will not be able to finish,” the chair umpire announced.
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“Therefore the match will be suspended until tomorrow. Play is suspended.”
An Instagram video featuring a caption of ‘Wimbledon curfew: the DUMBEST rule in sports’ caught Fritz’s attention, after his opener against Mpetshi Perricard was suspended with an 11 p.m. hard stop looming.
“Let the boys play!!! They got 45 minutes,” glue.guy posted.
“They would’ve let us play if my opponent agreed to, I said I wanted to he didn’t,” Fritz responded.
He was forced to wait until Tuesday, while Fritz’s girlfriend Morgan Riddle captured the first-round tension.
“Huh, wonder why,” posted Riddle, on top of a message from her health tracker, which displayed a message that read, ‘Your body has experieneced more stress than usual today.’
With $24.5 million in career earnings and eight previous Wimbledon runs, Fritz was supposed to bounce into the second round.
He tops Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul among the highest-ranked American men, and Fritz returned to south west London with a recent victory at Eastbourne on grass.
Mpetshi Perricard, ranked No. 36, buzzed social media on Monday with a 153mph serve, which was 5 mph faster than Taylor Dent’s previous best in 2010.
He drew within two points of winning the fourth set and advancing to the second round.
But Fritz was smoother and more precise on Tuesday, and all the blazing serves ended as a five-set defeat on grass.
It won’t get any easier, he faces another 6ft 8in rising star in Canada’s Gabriel Diallo, who needed just 1hr 41mins to advance through his first round opener.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
