The fastest serve on the sheet is usually the least useful one

Speed guns reward the flat ball down the middle, which is the delivery a good returner most wants to see.

The number flashes on the screen, the crowd makes a noise, and the point that followed is forgotten in about four seconds. That is the correct amount of attention to give a serve speed, because the fastest delivery a player hits in a match is almost always the one he hits into the least valuable part of the box.

Here is why. Maximum pace comes from a flat strike with very little spin, which means the ball has to travel through the lowest possible margin over the net, which means the safest target for it is the middle of the service box rather than a corner. A flat serve down the T at full pace is enormous when it lands. Aimed wide, the same ball clips the tape or misses long often enough that nobody plays the percentages that way twice in a row.

Meanwhile the returner is standing there facing a ball with no lateral movement, arriving on a predictable line, at a height he has faced ten thousand times. He does not need to swing. He needs to hold the racket still and let the pace do the work, and a good returner will get it back at his feet, which is the worst possible outcome for a server who is now moving forward off balance.

The serve that actually wins the point is usually eight or ten miles an hour slower and full of spin. Kick out wide on the advantage court, dragging the returner two yards off the doubles alley. Slice into the body on the deuce side, jamming the elbow. Neither of those lights up a speed gun and both of them produce a weak return that the server can step in and hit.

This is my objection to how serving gets talked about generally. The speed figure is broadcast because it is a single number that fits on screen, and it has slowly become the way players are described, so juniors chase it. Then they arrive on tour with a huge first serve, a fifty per cent hold rate against decent returners, and a shoulder that has been asked to do something violent for years.

Placement is harder to display and it is the whole game.

If I could put one graphic on television it would not be pace. It would be the distance from the ball's bounce to the nearest line.