Us Open 2006: Who was the biggest server of the realm?

There were a lot of matches with big servers out there at Flushing Meadows. During some matches serves were regularly clocked at over 120 miles per hour. Successful returns were rare. Rallies, almost unheard of it. It sometimes was just the big server, winner or miss.
So, let’s take a deep look into the stats to discover who dropped more serve bombs. Almost all of you would say A-Rod. Yeah. Andy fired 102 aces in 7 matches. That’s the highest number in terms of absolute value. Now let’s try to look into aces related to total first serves “in”, where the amount of first serve “in” is considered representative of the total points played “available for aces” (You know, second serve bomb is also possible but it’s rare and can be neglected in this case). And here are some surprising results as well as some confirmations. The player with the highest ratio “aces out of first serves played is...Mardy Fish. Ya, exactly. Not Andy, not Roger. In only 2 matches Mardy served 39 aces out of 124 points played with the first serve (31,5%). So, the Oscar goes to Mardy. The runner up is Feliciano Lopez who sent down 32 aces out of 136 points played (23,5%). So far, no stunning news, ‘coz both players standing at 6 foot 2 inches and have ever served well. I would go far to say their game plan is serve based. The third spot in the ranking goes to Marcos Baghdatis, the youngster but charismatic shot-maker who fired 34 aces out of 151 points played. Not bad, for Marcos. And then comes Marc Giquel. The french qualifier in 4 matches served 50 aces out of 234 first serves played. What an amazing score! Better than A-Rod who is only fifth in this special ranking. To not talk about Roger, who is even lower. Freakin’ results, guyz! But what is the weakness of Pemulis’ method? The lack of track record. Since some players played only 2 matches, it remains difficult to analyse their serve stats in absence of a meaningful track record.

Important disclosure: this post is based on current public information the Pemulis considers reliable, but he makes no representation that it is accurate or complete, and it should not be relied on as such.