Yao Ming meets Tennis stars

Yao Ming meets Tennis stars and makes them look tiny

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Former Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming has been meeting some of the world’s best tennis players during the course of the Shanghai Masters this week, with hilarious results. Yao has a listed height of 7 feet 6 inches, which puts him 31st on the list of tallest people on the planet.

Yao spent most of his career at Houston Rockets as a Center, but was forced into an early retirement as injuries plagued his career. He became a cult icon because of his incredible height, but also his persona as he was often liked to being a gentle giant.

Tennis is not exactly a profession for small people and so the photos of Yao with players who are well over 6 feet tall are brilliant. Here is Yao with Swiss legend Roger Federer, who is 6 foot 1:

It gets even better when you see the picture of Yao and Novak Djokovic together. The in-form Serb is even taller than Federer, standing at 6 foot 2, but next to Yao the height difference is hilarious:

The tallest player currently on the tennis tour is Croatian giant Ivo Karlovic. He stands at 6 foot 11 and unsurprisingly his biggest weapon is his serve. He once held the record for fastest recorded serve in a professional tennis match, firing one in at 251km/h.

This record was only recently beaten by Sam Groth in 2012, but Karlovic is still considered to be one of the best servers of all time. American John Inser isn’t far behind Karlovic, at 6 foot 10. He played the smallest player on the tour Olivier Rochus in the Olympics in 2012.

The Belgian comes in a 5 foot 5, well over a foot smaller than Inser. Here’s the brilliant photo of them at the net before the match:

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