Breaking speed barrier!

Milos Raonic, one of the world’s fastest servers, had finished off a first-round victory over Santiago Giraldo in Wimbledon. So how fast did Raonic serve this time? There was no way to know. His match was on Court 7, not one of the six courts that have radar equipment.

Service speed remains one of the game’s talking points. It has been a tour staple since the early 1990s, generating buzz in the stands and bragging rights in the players’ lounge. But it also remains one of the least reliable measures of excellence, in part because huge servers do not necessarily make great players – Roger Federer’s serve threatens no speed barriers – and in part because serve speeds tend to fluctuate significantly depending on which system is used to record them.

 “It’s different all over the place,” Raonic said. “I don’t think to us players it would matter as much. I think it would just give more reality to the effect of it. You could have a more accurate reading on it, and people can understand. Because people are going to wonder, ‘If he’s serving 150 there, how come he comes here and he can’t get a serve past 130?”'

 Neither the men’s tour nor women’s tour recognizes official speed records because of the variations in equipment and because, as Raonic experienced last week, not every court has a speed gun.

 But there is still a widely followed, if unofficial, pecking order. In May, glasses and eyebrows were raised when Samuel Groth, an Australian journeyman, hit an ace at a challenger event in Busan, South Korea, that was clocked at 163 mph.

 Groth, ranked No 262, was far too low in the rankings to get into Wimbledon this year. But in statistical terms, his serve in Busan was a Beamonesque effort: 7 mph faster than the previous unofficial mark of 156 mph established by the towering Croatian Ivo Karlovic at a Davis Cup match in March last year.  To put Groth’s big number in perspective, the fastest serve recorded in any Grand Slam event this year was a 147 mph effort from Raonic at the French Open.

Earlier this season, Raonic hit a serve clocked at 155 mph in San Jose, California, which ties him for third on the all-time list with Andy Roddick.  “I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see it,” Karlovic said of Groth’s serve in Busan. “So I can’t really comment on the accuracy of the speed machine at that tournament. But I know that Sam can hit bombs.”

 Others are more openly sceptical. “I can’t believe it,” said Paul Annacone, the former tour player and big server who is one of Roger Federer’s coaches. “I’ve seen Groth play. I haven’t seen him play in a year, but I’ve seen him. It’s got to be the radar gun.”

 What contributes to the doubt is that Groth hit two other recorded serves during the otherwise obscure match that would have broken Karlovic’s mark. Groth also hit his barrier-busting serve in tennis’ equivalent of the minor leagues: at the challenger level. Karlovic questions whether a serve hit in a challenger should be ranked with a serve hit on the main tour. Most challenger tournaments do not even employ radar guns.

 “A lot of challengers don’t have the opportunity, the extra money to afford that kind of setup,” Groth said in a telephone interview from Melbourne, Australia.

 But the Busan challenger did have one on center court, and that was where Groth wound up and struck a flat, cannonball serve down the T while trailing, 3-5, 30-0, in the first set of his second-round match against Uladzimir Ignatik of Belarus.
 Ignatik had just served a game with new balls, but Groth said that Ignatik had not used one of those new balls. Groth did and said he also benefited from a following wind. “I knew it was big when I hit it,” Groth said, “but I didn’t know it was that big.”

 The company that recorded Groth’s serve was FlightScope, one of the most prominent firms in the field. FlightScope provides technological support at tour events in North America and Europe, and also works extensively in golf.

 Before the ATP publicised Groth’s serve, it investigated the system used to measure it in Busan. “Basically, we verified that FlightScope used the same equipment at a challenger that they used at tour events,” Bram Tukker, the ATP employee who did the background check, said in a telephone interview.

  FlightScope confirmed that as well, but there was no attempt by the ATP to verify the data. Questioned about Groth’s serve last week, FlightScope initially struggled to verify it.  At first, a company employee, Stephen Parry, reported in an email that after examining the data, the “serve speed reported by the FlightScope RacquetRadar sensor was incorrect in Korea” and that the actual serve speed was 153 mph.

 In a later email, FlightScope inventor Henri Johnson said that the service speed displayed in Busan was indeed correct. Parry later retracted his analysis, saying he had simply misread the data.

“Stephen looked at some raw sampled data, which is data prior to any processing, and ‘noise’ or interference is very common in this case,” Johnson said in an email.
 Groth was unaware of FlightScope’s internal debate but well aware of the skepticism on tour.  “People have to make their own judgments on what they think,” Groth said. “The thing is for me, the ATP has said that they were happy that it was done with recognised equipment, and for me, I feel like I have that record.”

 The tricky part for those who would like to compare big serves is that FlightScope is not used at the Grand Slam events. Instead, IBM uses radar technology from a company called IDS, which is also widely employed in regular tour events.

According to Johnson, FlightScope and IDS use different technologies that can generate significantly different readings for the same serve, particularly flat, wide serves.  The fluctuations come as no surprise to Raonic. But what if he managed to break Groth’s unofficial record, no matter how out of reach it might seem?
 “If I do get it, I’ll smile,” Raonic said. “But I’m not going to go give myself a medal for it.”