One thing is clear, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard is not a nuanced professional tennis player, and he needs to be should he wishes to evolve his game well enough to get anywhere near being a continuously dangerous top-10 ATP player. He has a huge serve and a bombastic forehand, and relies on those to be successful.
If those immense tools are not working for him during any match, he is doomed. He knows only one way, and that is to keep blasting away as best he can. He is the equivalent of Black Metal that the top players are to jazz. They understand sometimes you need to change things up.
But maybe not on grass courts. If Mpetshi Perricard played in 1976, he might be a threat to win five Wimbledons. His serve and forehand are so good in 2025 that he is still a threat to make a run at the Wimbledon title. That is until he plays someone like Jannik Sinner or, especially, Carlos Alcaraz.
Taylor Fritz comes through against Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in the first round of Wimbledon 2025
Those two players can adapt even to the speed and excellence of Mpetshi Perricard's serve. To defeat them, the 21-year-old Frenchman needs to understand he must adapt too. He isn't there yet.
But he didn't need to be against the technically sound but less jazzy (than Alcaraz or Sinner) Taylor Fritz. The American is a very good player and worthy of his top-10 ranking, but there is a huge difference between the skill sets of Sinner and Alcaraz than Fritz. Mpetshi Perricard can take advantage of Fritz's good, but not elite, return skills.
He proved as much in the first round of the 2025 Wimbledon. That this was a first-round matchup is criminal, and Wimbledon must be more aware of how things go in the future. Fritz is a good player, but Mpetshi Perricard is a specialist on grass courts. Maybe when the draw was completed, Wimbledon officials simply sat back and laughed at the fun Fritz versus Mpetshi Perricard would contain.
The American and the Frenchman traded blows in the first two sets, but the Frenchman came out the better in both tie-breaks for the sets with elite serving. He occasionally broke out a drop-shot, which he needs to do more of because his opponents are so shocked by it.
It also says a lot about grass-court tennis that, into the tie-break of the fourth set, Fritz had yet to face a break point but was down a set. The only break was one Fritz got off Mpetshi Perricard in the third set. The American also showed in the fourth-set tie-break the mentality it takes to be good that the Frenchman still needs to learn.
Trailing 2-5, Fritz came back to take the tie-break 8-6 to force a fifth set. That is when the most questionable part of the match happened. As quickly as the games were taking place due to quick serve and volleys, the fifth set could have probably taken place in 30 minutes. Instead, the officials decided darkness was setting in and pushed the final set back into Tuesday.
In what became a one-set match, each player held with relative ease, except for one Fritz service game, until the set reached 5-4 Fritz with Mpetshi Perricard serving. The American, though, shockingly jumped out to a 0-40 lead, and took the game with the Frenchman winning only a point. Fritz might be a very dangerous player the rest of the tournament.