Credit: Skyscraper2010
The story of last week’s tournament in Basel was the blistering service performance of Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard. The six-foot, eight-inch Frenchman racked up 109 aces in five matches, including more than one-third of his service points in Sunday’s final against Ben Shelton.
Mpetshi Perricard is a big server straight out of central casting. He can nail the corners at 150 miles per hour; on Sunday he hit one second serve at 146. He puts plenty of mustard on his groundstrokes as well. He often plays a high-risk brand of baseline tennis, recognizing that with a serve like his, he only needs to break once or twice–or just pick off a couple of return points in the tiebreak.
The Frenchman’s rapid rise through the ranks also fits his style. For a big server, wins can come in batches, when conditions–or, simply, tiebreak luck–are on his side. After an unexpected breakthrough on clay in Lyon, Mpetshi Perricard upset Sebastian Korda (in four tiebreaks!) and reached the second week at Wimbledon. Basel played faster than any tour event this year, and he took advantage. In between, he suffered through a 1-7 stretch in which he lost five straight tiebreaks and saw his double-fault rate balloon into double digits.
Much of Mpetshi Perricard’s future success will depend on his ability to handle these ups and downs. So far, he has struggled a bit to avoid the bad patches that spell doom for one-dimensional players. In his limited tour-level action, he has won more service points (70.2%) than anyone except Jannik Sinner. Yet five men hold more reliably than the Frenchman does, even after an unbroken week in Basel. The successes of Milos Raonic and John Isner–and even Shelton last year–come from playing better than usual under pressure, something Mpetshi Perricard has yet to consistently demonstrate.
I do love talking about servebots serving service aces. But while everybody raves about the GMP serve, I keep thinking about the backhand.
On the one hand
Mpetshi Perricard is now the fourth-highest ranked man with a one-handed backhand. His shot is nothing like the graceful, big-backswing, Federer- and Gasquet-inspired strokes of Grigor Dimitrov and Lorenzo Musetti. He often does little more than set up the racket to block the ball back. Strong as he is, the resulting flat shot can be much more than a mere defensive maneuver.
A few generations ago, it was standard to see big servers with one-handers. Think Richard Krajicek or Greg Rusedski; you might even put Pete Sampras in that category. More recently, Ivo Karlovic sported a one-handed backhand, though he mostly hit slices. Christopher Eubanks fits a broadly similar mold. Now, though, one-handers are dying breed, with just nine representatives in the top 100 of the ATP rankings.
Unlike Musetti or Stefanos Tsitsipas, Mpetshi Perricard isn’t likely to inspire the next generation of one-handed stars. No one is going to call this guy a throwback. On a good serving day, the Frenchman’s highlight reel features barely any groundstrokes at all.
What, then, do the numbers say? Is the Mpetshi Perricard backhand any good? Would he be better off with a two-hander like Raonic’s, Isner’s, or Reilly Opelka’s? Or, to return to the question I started with: For someone who specializes in ending rallies before they begin, does his backhand even matter?
Safely hidden
When the Frenchman’s game plan is working, his backhand is tucked away, out of sight. No backhands are necessary when the serve doesn’t come back, and when he controls the point, he prefers the forehand. Setting aside service returns, few players avoid their backhands as scrupulously as Mpetshi Perricard does.
The average ATPer hits 44% of their groundstrokes from the backhand side. Here are the most backhand-shy men with at least 15 matches in the Match Charting Project database, along with some other big servers of note:
Player BH/GS Ivo Karlovic 30.1% Jack Draper 32.5% Ryan Harrison 35.2% Thiago Monteiro 35.5% Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard 35.5% Jaume Munar 36.1% Vasek Pospisil 36.4% Alejandro Tabilo 37.1% Alexei Popyrin 37.3% Guido Pella 37.4% Ben Shelton 37.6% Maxime Cressy 37.9% … Christopher Eubanks 38.9% Matteo Berrettini 41.1% Milos Raonic 42.9% -- Average 44.0% John Isner 44.3% Reilly Opelka 45.6% Greg Rusedski 46.2% Nick Kyrgios 46.8% Pete Sampras 47.7% Richard Krajicek 48.3% Goran Ivanisevic 51.1% Mark Philippoussis 52.1%
Backhands per groundstroke is not the easiest stat to parse, because it is the product of so many different factors. Nearly everyone would like to keep their number low, so it’s partly a function of footwork and anticipation. (And sheer willingness to hit forehands from outlandish positions.) But it is also influenced by opponents, who will work more or less hard to find the backhand. Mpetshi Perricard’s place on this list, then, could be telling us various things. He hits his forehand when he can, and his movement is good enough to make it happen. Opponents might not be trying as hard as they could to force a backhand.
Yet another factor is how comfortable the player is with their slice. GMP hits his quite a bit, meaning that he unleashes the flat one-hander that much more rarely. The typical tour player hits their flat or top-spin backhand on 36% of groundstrokes. The Frenchman comes in at 27%, second only to Bernard Tomic among active players:
Player not-slice-BH/GS Ivo Karlovic 22.6% Bernard Tomic 27.2% Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard 27.4% Thiago Monteiro 27.7% Jack Draper 28.0% Ryan Harrison 28.2% Vasek Pospisil 28.4% Denis Istomin 29.0% Tennys Sandgren 29.5% Christopher Eubanks 29.5% Alejandro Tabilo 29.9% Maxime Cressy 30.5% Jiri Vesely 30.6% Guido Pella 30.7% Denis Kudla 30.7%
All of this is to say: Mpetshi Perricard hardly leans on the flat backhand. His serve keeps point short, and his preferences are for other shots. In the 138 points of the Basel final, he hit only 28 flat backhands, six of them on service returns.
Backhand impact
When the Frenchman is forced to hit a backhand (or chooses to–anything’s possible, I guess), the results aren’t great. When he goes for the flat backhand, he wins 43% of points, compared to a tour average of 49%. He takes more risks than his peers, but not overwhelmingly so: 9% of his one-handers end in a winner or forced error, while 12% are unforced errors. (Tour norms are 8% and 9%, respectively.)
These outcomes aren’t as extreme as his preferences. Of about 200 players with as many non-slice backhands in the MCP database, Mpetshi Perricard’s 43% comes in 21st from the bottom. Compared to other big servers, that win rate is positively respectable:
Player W/FE% UFE% inPointsWon% John Isner 6.9% 12.8% 35.8% Milos Raonic 7.3% 12.5% 40.4% Matteo Berrettini 4.8% 10.4% 42.5% Andy Roddick 5.5% 7.8% 42.6% Felix Auger-Aliassime 6.0% 9.9% 43.4% Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard 8.9% 12.6% 43.5% Ben Shelton 6.2% 11.1% 43.8% Nick Kyrgios 7.9% 10.7% 43.9% Kevin Anderson 7.6% 11.0% 44.1% Hubert Hurkacz 6.2% 10.0% 45.6% -- Average 7.3% 9.0% 48.6% Jack Draper 6.5% 5.7% 49.1%
Against this group, the Frenchman’s winner (and forced error) rate really stands out. Given the outcomes when he doesn’t go for it, it’s possible he should be even more aggressive than he already is. Master tactician Milos Raonic took a similar tack, piling up as many unforced errors as GMP does, but without quite as many winners.
The picture is less rosy when we look at slice backhands. As noted, Mpetshi Perricard hits a lot of them–close to one-third of his groundstrokes from that wing. When he does, he wins 33% of points, compared to 42% for his peers. Only a handful of players have posted such low slice-backhand win rates, and they are mostly the names you would expect:
Player W/FE% UFE% inPointsWon% John Isner 1.5% 11.1% 27.3% Christopher Eubanks 1.6% 10.7% 30.2% Kevin Anderson 3.2% 6.5% 31.4% Nicolas Jarry 4.0% 13.2% 32.7% Ivo Karlovic 3.5% 12.0% 32.8% Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard 3.1% 3.9% 33.1% Ben Shelton 2.0% 7.1% 33.3% ... Nick Kyrgios 4.2% 6.1% 35.6% Felix Auger-Aliassime 3.6% 8.2% 38.1% Hubert Hurkacz 2.7% 3.9% 38.1% Milos Raonic 4.7% 9.4% 40.3% Matteo Berrettini 2.8% 9.0% 41.5% -- Average 3.3% 5.4% 41.6%
The Frenchman doesn’t miss much. Why just keep the ball in play, though, if you’re likely to lose the point anyway? By hitting so many slices, Mpetshi Perricard makes his flat-backhand numbers look better, but he probably doesn’t pick up any points by making the trade. Prolonging the point is a good strategy if you’re Casper Ruud–or, really, about 80% of the guys on tour. But if you play like GMP, it’s better to go big.
This is one way in which the one-hander may cost him. The two-handed backhand is particularly valuable in its ability to block overpowering shots without retreating to a fully defensive mode. While players with one-handers try to achieve the same thing with a slice, the stats tell us that it’s a poor imitation. The Frenchman’s in particular isn’t doing him any favors.
So, does it even matter?
Mpetshi Perricard doesn’t hit that many backhands, and he isn’t that much worse than average when he does. But, the margins in tennis are small, and the margins for big servers are smaller still. In 26 tour-level matches this year through the Basel final, GMP won exactly 50% of his points. (Not 50.1%, not 49.9%–50% on the dot.) Five players in the top 20 win 50.8% or less. That’s how close the Frenchman is to an even bigger breakthrough.
My backhand potency (BHP) stat quantifies the impact that each player’s (non-slice) backhands have on their broader results. The stat measures how often a shot ends the point in either direction, as well as what happens on the shot after that. Based on the matches we’ve charted this year, GMP’s BHP per 100 backhands stands at -4.3, one of the lower numbers on tour for players with at least 10 charted matches from the last 52 weeks:
Player BHP/100 Nicolas Jarry -6.9 Felix Auger Aliassime -4.6 Tallon Griekspoor -4.6 Flavio Cobolli -4.3 Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard -4.3 Alexei Popyrin -4.2 Dominic Thiem -4.1 Botic Van De Zandschulp -3.5 Matteo Berrettini -3.1 Ben Shelton -2.4 Stefanos Tsitsipas -2.4
What does this mean for the bottom line? -4.3 BHP is equivalent to about -3 points per 100 backhands. Since he doesn’t hit many backhands, that’s about -1.1 per 100 points.
My best estimate, then, is that if we magically replaced the Frenchman’s backhand with a neutral one–say, that of Arthur Fils–he’d pick up 1.1 more points per 100. Instead of winning 50% of points at tour level, he’d win 51.1%. That isn’t good enough to crack the top 10, but it would probably get him into the top 20.
Quantifying the impact of slices is tougher, because the more conservative shot is less likely to end the point immediately, or even on the next shot. If we figure that Mpetshi Perricard’s slice is roughly the same distance below average as his flat backhand, that’s another 0.5 or 0.6 points per 100 he could gain by acquiring a tour-average shot. Daniil Medvedev has hung in the top five in the ATP rankings while winning 51.9% of points. Stringing all of these assumptions together, we can start to see how a capably-backhanded GMP could reach that level.
The bad news for the Frenchman is that climbing the ranks is hard. Mpetshi Perricard is the worst returner in the top 50, and it isn’t even close. He breaks in about 10% of his return games; no one else is below 14%. Earlier this year, I wrote about the similar challenges facing Ben Shelton: Historically, a lot of players have arrived on tour with big serves, huge potential, and tons of hype. Few of them have been able to shore up their weak points enough to crack the top ten, let alone achieve greater feats.
The good news: There is so much room for improvement. Even without polishing the strokes themselves, it’s possible that a more aggressive set of tactics could win him a few more points on return. In yesterday’s loss to Karen Khachanov, the Frenchman won the first set despite picking off just two of 37 return points. One-dimensional servebot or not, he can learn to do better than that.
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