Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard is continuing to show that he can be one of the biggest names in tennis, and not just literally but metaphorically. The 21-year-old Frenchman may have lost to Carlos Alcaraz at the China Open before falling at the first hurdle in Shanghai. But he continues to demonstrate all the power, mobility and subtlety that have already won him his first ATP event and taken him to the second week of a Slam. Put simply, as the tennis season begins to reach its endpoint with the Asian swing, ‘GMP’ continues to progress in what has been his breakthrough year.
Alcaraz the acid test for any and all opposition
A match against Carlos Alcaraz is currently probably the acid test for any promising young male tennis player. The Spaniard may be only 21 himself, but he has already won four Majors and become the youngest world #1 since world rankings began in 1973. And although he had suffered the proverbial summer of two halves—winning the French Open and Wimbledon, before losing the Olympic final to Novak Djokovic and then losing in the second round of the US Open—he had performed superbly in two successive team events, the Davis Cup and the Laver Cup, to suggest that he was getting back to his best. Indeed, for the first time ever in his nascent career, rather than only playing two-thirds of the season because of injury, he might be able to play right to the end of the 2024 season.
So it was a relatively refreshed and rejuvenated Alcaraz that Mpetshi Perricard faced in Beijing, and yet GMP held his own for the bulk of the match against probably the most dynamic and exciting player that men’s tennis has ever seen. Mpetshi Perricard may have lost in straight sets—6-4, 6-4—but the match was far closer and more compelling than the scoreline might suggest.
It was only the fact that Mpetshi Perricard lost his serve at the start of each set that meant he was unable to really challenge Alcaraz and at least take him to three sets. In the first set, he was probably a little nervous, having never before faced a top 10 player, let alone a past (and potentially future) #1 player in Alcaraz. However, he recovered brilliantly to hold his serve for the rest of the set and even had three break-points to break back right at the end of the set, before Alcaraz recovered magnificently to serve it out.
Having done so well for most of the first set, it was doubly disappointing that Mpetshi Perricard repeated the trick at the start of the second set and lost serve again. Just as in the first set, he recovered well to hold serve for the rest of the set but he could not break Alcaraz back. It was a classic illustration of the difference between a great player, as Alcaraz already is, and a really good player who can potentially become great, as Mpetshi Perricard currently is.
GMP shows power, mobility and agility
Nevertheless, GMP showed against Alcaraz the three elements of his game that are the “weapons” that could eventually take him into the world’s top 10. First, there is the enormous power, especially (but not exclusively) on serve. His great height of 6 feet eight inches naturally gives him an advantage on serve but he makes the most of it by allying extreme accuracy to extreme pace. At one point, he served two successive aces, both of which approached 150 mph, which drew loud and widespread gasps from the audience.
However, it is not only on serve that Mpetshi Perricard is able to unleash or unload with enormous might. His groundstrokes are also impressive, perhaps especially on the backhand side. Unusually for a man of his size, GMP has a single-handed backhand, which, when played with full power, proved capable of knocking the redoubtable Alcaraz not just off the baseline but occasionally off his feet.
Secondly, Mpetshi Perricard is unusually mobile for such a tall man. Although he is not in the Alcaraz class for sheer, all-court mobility, he is surprisingly quick and his huge stride allows him to make up ground in a way that other shorter players are simply unable to. And that mobility allowed him to compete with Alcaraz, especially at the net.
Thirdly, and perhaps most shockingly for tennis fans who are used to giant men like Ivo Karlović or Reilly Opelka being predominantly gigantic servers, Mpetshi Perricard is capable of playing with great subtlety. Against Alcaraz, that was most apparent when he achieved the rare feat of out-drop-shotting the great Spaniard, somehow reaching a trademark Alcaraz drop-shot before beating him with an even better one.
Testing Alcaraz the latest feat in an impressive year
So, although Mpetshi Perricard was ultimately unable to extend Alcaraz to a third set, let alone beat him, his first match against him proved that he continues to be on an upward trend through 2024. Alcaraz and Sinner may have set the gold standard for young players replacing The Big Three at the top of the game, but Mpetshi Perricard, like several other young male players including Ben Shelton and Hamad Medjedovic, is progressing at his own, slightly slower pace and may eventually follow them into the world’s top 10.
Mpetshi Perricard first came to prominence for something more than his height and long name when he won the ATP event in Lyon, which is traditionally the last major warm-up event before the French Open. As I wrote at the time, his performances that week showed that he could be a future titan of men’s tennis, and not just in height.
Almost everything that has happened since Lyon has reinforced that impression. He may have lost in the first round at Roland Garros but just a few weeks later he reached the last 16 at Wimbledon. He actually lost his last match in qualifying for Wimbledon, but he subsequently entered the main draw as a lucky loser and made the most of that luck by becoming the first lucky loser in nearly thirty years to reach the second week in London SW19. And in his last 16 match, he actually won the first set against eventual semifinalist Lorenzo Musetti before eventually losing in four sets.
Mpetshi Perricard’s exploits on the grass of Wimbledon took him into the world top 50 for the first time, peaking at #44, and although he has subsequently slipped a little in the rankings (he is currently just outside the top 50 at #51), there seems little doubt that he will not only return to the top 50 but will eventually go much higher.
That is because in addition to all his other attributes, particularly his height and power, he is an all-surface player. Having won his first ATP event on clay, he then had his first major run at a Major on the grass of Wimbledon and in Beijing last week he proved that he can go head to head with Carlos Alcaraz on hardcourt, which is the Spaniard’s professed favourite surface.
As the 2024 season slowly winds to a close, Mpetshi Perricard has undoubtedly been one of the breakthrough male players of the year. If he can continue to advance in 2025 as he has done in 2024, then reaching the world’s top 20 within the next 12 months is a perfectly realistic goal. And beyond that, such is his apparently limitless potential that he can dream not only of becoming the first French male player to win a Major since Yannick Noah won the French Open in 1983 but of becoming the most famous initials in tennis since BJK.
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