Melbourne VIC, Australia, 19 December 2016 | tennis.com.au

We all know that Nick Kyrgios owns an excellent serve.

And that perception has been proven by the ATP World Tour’s Serve Stats Leaderboard.

Players’ serves are assessed on several metrics, including first-serve percentage, first-serve points won, second-serve points won and service games won.

These components, along with adding a player’s average number of aces per match and subtracting their average number of double faults per match, are collated to give the player a “serve rating”.

Kyrgios’ serve rating put him fourth on the list of “best servers” in 2016 – behind John Isner, Ivo Karlovic and Milos Raonic.

It helps explain why the young Aussie enjoyed the best season of his career, winning three ATP titles and reaching a career-high ranking of No.13.

More incredibly, he is fifth on the overall list since records began in 1991.

That puts him ahead of celebrated servers like Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, Richard Krajicek, Goran Ivanisevic, Greg Rusedski and Mark Philippoussis.

Check out the full article by Craig O’Shannessy on atpworldtour.com, which breaks down Kyrgios’ serving statistics.