Ivanisevic ‘Cannonballs’ Make a Splash : Wimbledon: Croatian’s 120-m.p.h. serves too much for Woodforde to handle.

What can you do when someone serves 34 aces against you?

“You either laugh or cry,” said Mark Woodforde, who was talking about getting dusted off by Goran Ivanisevic, 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (7-4), 6-3, Wednesday at Wimbledon.

Ivanisevic’s fastest serve was clocked at 129 m.p.h. in the second-round match on Centre Court. Woodforde felt pretty helpless against Ivanisevic’s serves.

“I could not get my racket out to it,” Woodforde said. “He out-cannonballed me. At one stage I could not stop laughing because I felt so poor and weak out there.”

Actually, Ivanisevic can make a lot of players feel the same way. The 6-foot-4 left-hander from Croatia came close to upsetting Boris Becker in the 1990 Wimbledon semifinal with a hard-serving barrage that prompted Becker to say: “He reminded me of me.”

Ivanisevic’s third-round opponent is another hard-server, 6-5 Marc Rosset of Switzerland, and if Ivanisevic gets out of that match, he is in line for a potential fourth-round matchup with Ivan Lendl.

Against Woodforde, Ivanisevic averaged 116 m.p.h. on his first serve and 95 m.p.h. on his second serve with his fastest second serve clocked at 107 m.p.h.

He polished off one game with four aces, which prompted Woodforde the next time he had a chance to return to playfully grab his racket by the head and swing the handle.

Ivanisevic served the same way, trying to hit the ball with the handle, but whiffed.

Then Woodforde, also a left-hander, suggested to Ivanisevic that they both play right-handed. Ivanisevic agreed. His right-handed serve was clocked at 37 m.p.h., meaning he has both the fastest and slowest serves in the tournament.

What the heck, Woodforde said.

“Well, you may as well go out there and have a bit of fun if you’re just going to be bombarded like I was. What could I do?

“At that stage it was like a shooting gallery--you are walking side to side to side, then you get a ding and you hit one.

“If he keeps playing like that . . . in all the matches, then he’s got a great chance of winning the title.”

Ivanisevic promised to continue his Wimbledon tactic of knocking the ball as hard as he can at the other guy’s feet.

“On grass, I’m trying to go for an ace, because I mean it’s going fast, so I try to get an ace,” he said. “Why not?”