Daniil Medvedev reveals what happened when Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard played doubles with Karen Khachanov earlier this year

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Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard served his way to the Basel Open title to scoop up his maiden ATP 500 title.

Towering above most at over two meters, France’s new kid on the block is making waves already on the ATP circuit.

A broadly unknown player at the start of the year, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard totted up a handful of big wins gradually throughout the season, with victories over Holger Rune and Felix Auger-Aliassime just last week.

Winning his second match over Ben Shelton this year in Sunday’s Basel Open final, the Frenchman produced his fifth serving masterclass of the week.

At just 21, Mpetshi Perricard has got stuck into life on tour instantly, competing in both singles and doubles events.

Teaming up with Russia’s Karen Khachanov at the Washington Open three months ago birthed a hilarious story that Daniil Medvedev revealed after the Frenchman’s title win on Sunday.

Daniil Medvedev reveals hilarious Washington Open story

In Washington, the Frenchman played his part in a shock win over third seeds Jamie Murray and Michael Venus.

While the pair were knocked out in the next round, Khachanov’s shared what Mpetshi Perricard did during their warm-up – a story eventually relayed by Medvedev.

He said: “My friend Karen Khachanov played doubles with Giovanni in Washington. [When] we warm up, we serve, so he does a first serve and we know he’s got a very fast one. And he tells Karen, ‘I will do a second serve’.

“So Karen enters the court and he receives a missile at 200km/h. So he asks ‘what happened?’ Giovanni answers ‘well I slowed it down by 10km/h’. So yeah he serves real fast and strong. He plays really well and it’s a big title. By the way I didn’t know he won today so congratulations to him.”

The funny things is, Mpetshi Perricrad was striking balls at 235 km/h this week – maybe his second serve really is 200km/h!

With a bucketload of aces in the Basel Open final, I crunched the numbers to see just how deadly the Frenchman’s serve really is.

Giovanni Mpteshi Perricard serves up astonishing 109 aces in Basel

Losing just a set all week, Mpetshi Perricard was unplayable at times on serve.

Throughout his five matches, the Frenchman did’t break serve once and faced no break points in both the semi-final and final.

A brutal display, he recorded 109 aces all week, averaging 21.8 per match.

With another charismatic American, Frances Tiafoe, his opponent at the Paris Masters this week, it doesn’t look likely his serve is about to fail him.