Tallest and Shortest Pro Tennis Players (and Whether Height Actually Wins Matches)
From Reilly Opelka at 6'11" to Diego Schwartzman at 5'7", we rank tennis's tallest and shortest ATP pros and break down what the serve-speed and match-win data really says about height.
By Abin Kark
Reilly Opelka is 6 feet 11 inches tall. Diego Schwartzman is 5 feet 7 inches. Both have competed inside the ATP top 100. That is a 16-inch gap, well over a foot, between two men who show up to the same tournaments, hit the same lines, and get judged by the same scoreboard.
Tennis is one of the strangest sports to analyze by height, because unlike basketball or gymnastics, it doesn't obviously select for one body type at the elite level. A huge serve favors a tall frame. Court coverage, first-step quickness, and return depth often favor a lower center of gravity. The result is a sport where genuine 6'11" giants and 5'7" players who move like they're on rails both reach the top of the game, for almost opposite biomechanical reasons.
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📏 The Tallest Pro Tennis Players
| Rank | Player | Height (ft/in) | Height (cm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivo Karlović | 6′11″ | 211 cm |
| 1 | Reilly Opelka | 6′11″ | 211 cm |
| 3 | John Isner | 6′10″ | 208 cm |
| 4 | Maxime Cressy | 6′7″ | 201 cm |
| 5 | Kevin Anderson | 6′8″ | 203 cm |
| 6 | Milos Raonic | 6′5″ | 196 cm |
| 7 | Alexander Zverev | 6′6″ | 198 cm |
| 8 | Daniil Medvedev | 6′6″ | 198 cm |
| 9 | Marin Čilić | 6′6″ | 198 cm |
| 10 | Nick Kyrgios | 6′4″ | 193 cm |
Ivo Karlović and Reilly Opelka are tied for the tallest players in the modern game and, more remarkably, in recorded tennis history. Both built careers almost entirely around one weapon: a serve that starts from a contact point most returners have never had to face.
📏 The Shortest Pro Tennis Players
| Rank | Player | Height (ft/in) | Height (cm) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Diego Schwartzman | 5′7″ | 170 cm |
| 1 | Yoshihito Nishioka | 5′7″ | 170 cm |
| 1 | Sebastián Báez | 5′7″ | 170 cm |
| 4 | David Ferrer | 5′9″ | 175 cm |
| — | Olivier Rochus* | 5′6″ | 168 cm |
*Historical note: Rochus retired in 2011 and isn't part of the current tour, but at 5'6" (168 cm) he's generally considered the shortest player in recorded professional tennis history. Among current top-100 regulars, Diego Schwartzman, Yoshihito Nishioka, and Sebastián Báez sit tied at the bottom of the height list, all around 5'7".
🎾 The Serve: Where Height Is a Genuine, Measurable Advantage
If there's one part of tennis where height converts directly and mechanically into performance, it's the serve. A taller player contacts the ball from a higher point, which does two things at once: it increases the steepness of the angle the serve can be hit at, and it shrinks the margin a returner has to read and react to a fast, flat delivery.
This isn't a vague impression, it shows up directly in the record books. John Isner holds several of the fastest recorded serves in ATP history and is one half of the longest match ever played, an 11-hour epic in 2010 that was essentially two enormous serving arms refusing to be broken. Ivo Karlović led the tour in aces for the better part of a decade. Reilly Opelka has repeatedly ranked among the tour leaders in service games won, a stat almost entirely insulated from a shorter opponent's return game.
⚡ Where Being Shorter Is Actually an Advantage
The serve advantage is real, but it is also close to the only part of tennis where height helps unambiguously. Everywhere else on the court, a lower center of gravity brings real, measurable benefits: faster direction changes, quicker recovery steps after a wide ball, and less distance for the body's weight to travel when changing from defense to offense mid-rally.
Diego Schwartzman built an entire top-15 career on exactly this. Nicknamed "El Peque" (the little one), he became famous for retrieving balls that looked, on television, physically impossible to reach, then converting that defense into offense faster than taller opponents could reset. His serve will never threaten Isner's. His movement, on clay especially, has troubled some of the best players of his generation.
The pattern across the sport: taller players tend to cluster around the serve-and-power end of the toolkit, shorter and mid-height players tend to cluster around movement, return depth, and rally consistency. Both routes reach the top of the rankings. Neither has quietly out-competed the other.
📊 So Does Height Actually Win Matches?
Look at recent ATP #1 rankings and the honest answer is: not by itself. The list of world No. 1 players spans a genuine range, from Diego Schwartzman-height contemporaries and past #1s in the 5'9"–5'11" band (Lleyton Hewitt, Andre Agassi, Jimmy Connors, Gustavo Kuerten among past examples of shorter or mid-height #1s) up through 6'6"+ players like Daniil Medvedev. The average height across the current ATP top 100 sits solidly in the low-to-mid 6-foot range, taller than the general male population, which does suggest some selection pressure toward height overall. But the single tallest players in the sport's history, Karlović and Opelka, never reached #1, while multiple players well under 6 feet have.
The honest read: height raises your ceiling on one specific skill (serving) and slightly narrows your margin on another (lateral movement), but neither effect is close to large enough to be destiny. Technique, footwork, mental game, and fitness still decide far more matches than the number on a player's passport.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who is the tallest tennis player of all time?
Ivo Karlović and Reilly Opelka are tied as the tallest players in recorded professional tennis history, both at 6 feet 11 inches (211 cm).
2. Who is the shortest tennis player of all time?
Belgian player Olivier Rochus is generally cited as the shortest player in recorded professional tennis history, at 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm). Among current top-100 regulars, Diego Schwartzman, Yoshihito Nishioka, and Sebastián Báez are tied for shortest at 5'7" (170 cm).
3. Does height help in tennis?
It helps specifically with serving: a higher contact point creates a steeper, harder-to-return serve, which is why the tour's biggest servers are almost all well above average height. It offers little advantage, and arguably a slight disadvantage, in lateral movement and defensive court coverage, where a lower center of gravity tends to help.
4. What is the average height of an ATP tennis player?
The current ATP top 100 averages somewhere in the low-to-mid 6-foot range (roughly 185–188 cm), noticeably taller than the general adult male population, though the range spans from 5'6" to 6'11".
5. Is Diego Schwartzman the shortest player in the ATP top 100?
He has been tied for shortest among recent top-100 regulars at 5'7" (170 cm), alongside Yoshihito Nishioka and Sebastián Báez.
🏁 Final Thoughts
Tennis doesn't have a height problem to solve the way some sports do. It has room for a 6'11" serving machine and a 5'7" retrieval specialist to both reach the top 15 in the same season, because the sport rewards enough different skills that no single body type can lock out the rest. That's rarer than it sounds, and it's a big part of why the sport stays interesting to watch across such a wide range of playing styles.
Curious exactly how you'd stack up next to Isner's serve reach or Schwartzman's low center of gravity? Line yourself up against any player, to scale →
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