By Sandra Harwitt

How many aces have you served? Nine, Nineteen, Ninety, Nine Hundred?

Well, those numbers might be respectable, but they fall seriously short of Ivo Karlovic, who on Monday night at the Exxonmobil Open in Doha, Qatar, became only the third player in history to surpass serving 9,000 aces in a career.

Okay, not a huge surprise considering that Karlovic comes complete with a 6-foot-11 height advantage.

The 35-year-old Croat — who turns 36 on the last day of February – joins Goran Ivanisevic and Andy Roddick in clearing the 9,000 mark. Ivanisevic closed his career with 10,183 aces in 895 matches played, while Roddick served up 9,074 in 780 matches played his day.

Karlovic needed all of two service games to get the deed done. He came into Monday’s match against Czech Lukas Rosol just five short of 9,000 and left with 27 additional aces to stand at 9,022 in 484 matches played.

Yup, that’s right. Roddick’s likely to get left behind shortly if Karlovic keeps being a mean serving machine. He could get left behind in the desert dust this week as Karlovic is only 53 aces — or let’s say three matches — away of putting himself into second place.

On Monday night, after Karlovic secured the first round win 7-6 (4), 6-3 he didn’t even think about Roddick when commenting about his new distinction in the game.

“Now I’m in the club,” Karlovic said. “It’s definitely one of my goals to be No. 1 in all aces. This year, maybe, I will do it. I would like to beat Goran but need over 1,000 more. Hopefully, I will do it.”

The Ace Race is on! And who is breathing down Karlovic’s neck — none other than Roger Federer. The Swiss sensation currently weighs in with 8895 aces in 1177 career matches played.