What makes Tirante’s serve so powerful?

How has Thiago Augustin Tirante, listed at 6’1” (185 cm) and 178 lbs. (81 kg), produced four of the five fastest serves this year?

Tirante blasted the fastest serve—149.3 mph—at the Madrid Open. The only other player with a serve among the five fastest is 6’8”, 225-pound Giovanni Mepetshi Perricard.

During the Cincinnati Open, where Tirante upset Novak Djokovic 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 and Jakub Mensik 5-7, 6-4, 6-4, former No. 1 Jim Courier, a leading Tennis Channel analyst, explained how the 25-year-old Argentine generates extraordinary service power despite his ordinary height and weight.

“Tirante has a loose grip and a wristy serve,” said Courier. “He has a languid and very long backswing with the racket dropping very low behind his back, and it’s incredibly violent at contact. It’s like cracking a whip.” To maximize the wrist snap, some of his palm is off the butt of the racket handle.

Biomechanics experts should measure racket head speed when servers contact the ball. Put simply, all other things being equal, the faster the racket-head speed, the faster the serve.

Several other Tirante statistics are revealing. He should improve his relatively low 57.7 first-serve percentage. That would likely increase his average of 8.4 aces per match. Interestingly, Tirante averages only 2.6 double faults per match. Finally, the Argentine is an impressive No. 9 in the ATP Under Pressure ratings, thanks partly to his No. 3 rating in deciding sets won with an 81.8% rate.

Besides Djokovic and Mensik, this year Tirante has also beaten No. 6 Flavio Cobolli (the 2026 French Open finalist), No. 9 Ben Shelton, No. 10 Taylor Fritz (the 2024 US Open finalist), No. 21 Tommy Paul, No. 25 Francisco Cerundolo, and No. 27 Alejandro Davidovich.

Tirante’s favorite surface is hard courts, and his favorite tournament is the US Open.

An inspiring tattoo on Thiago’s chest says, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

So keep an eye on dark horse Tirante at the US Open. And especially watch his serve. That is, if you can.

At Wimbledon, Thiago blasted the fastest serve of the tournament—almost 148 miles per hour (238km/h).

In her eye-opening essay in “The Conversation,” Michelle Spear wrote:

“Whether you’re a player or a spectator, the ability to see a tennis ball traveling that quickly across the court is a marvel of human physiology. At nearly 150 mph, the ball is traveling faster than anyone can watch it move.

“By the time your brain has processed the sight of the ball leaving the racket, it is already well on its way to the other end of the court. Yet professional tennis players return these high-powered serves with astonishing accuracy.

“The reason is that they do not rely on reaction alone. Returning a tennis serve depends on one of the brain’s most remarkable abilities: predicting the future.

“Tennis players—and spectators—face the same basic problem: the visual information arrives in their brain slightly late.”

Paul Fein
August 26, 2026