With Wimbledon 2014 fast approaching, we thought it would be fun to ‘match’ a car to a player’s speed of serve. We've picked out three male and three female players from the top ten list to compare serve and car speeds.
Novak Djokovic
Serbian born Novak, ranked men’s number one for Wimbledon this year, has an impressive serve recorded at 155 mph. A lover of German manufactured cars, it is only appropriate that the car whose top speed exactly matches his serve is a 2011 BMW 5 M5 F10 4 litre automatic. 2011 was also the year he won Wimbledon.
Andy Murray
Defending Champion Andy’s serve reaches a speed of 145 mph. Whilst he still drives about in the Volkswagen Polo he bought after passing his driving test, his serve to car match is a 1998 Citroen XM 3 litre V6. Scottish born Andy is this year’s number three seed.
Roger Federer
A MINI John Cooper Works Countryman with a top speed of 140 mph is the car to match the serve of the 2012 Wimbledon Champion somewhat off the speed of the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG he actually drives. Born in Switzerland he is ranked at number four for the 2014 tournament.
Serena Williams
The American born tennis star is a 5 times winner at Wimbledon. With a serve of 128 mph a 2009 Ford Fiesta ST 185 has a top speed to match, which is also the year when she won both singles and doubles championships at Wimbledon for the second time. The lady’s number one ranked player for 2014, has exactly the same speed of serve as the men’s number two seed Rafael Nadal who has an endorsement with the car manufacturer KIA.
Simona Halep
Ranked as the number three seed this Romanian player has a serve speed of 92 mph almost matching her 1991 year of birth. The totally electric Nissan Leaf, with a top speed of 93 mph is a close match for Simona’s serve.
Maria Sharapova
For this tall Russian player, we've picked out a 2004 Citroen C2 1.6 litre 16v, which matches her top serve speed of 121mph. With this also being the year in which Sharapova won the championship, we think the bigger challenge would be for her to fit in the small car we have chosen than take away the title!
Did you know three of the top ten players for this year’s Wimbledon were born in 1987 and are also included in this list?