Tag:targeted pronation

Roger Federer – Secrets of his Service 3.0

His Service 3.0 is an almost ideal stroke with a high level of the racket stability in the space, thanks also to the underlying helix form. The next main deciding aspect is the (in most cases) nearly perfect body energy unloading against the target based on the well-controlled (targeted) long-axis pronation. The photos below show that (in a contrary to the rather dangerous myths about the necessity to swing the racket by the non-dominant (her left) foot, as preached for decades in most of the tennis books and by most of the tennis coaches), Roger stays....

Marin Cilic – Potential risk factors in his service

Tall Marin Cilic (*1988 / CRO) belongs not only because of his impressive 198 cm (6'6'') build to the better servers on the ATP Tour. His service (obviously a clear Service 3.0) has also some excellent technical qualities, mainly around the quite often almost perfect pronation. Despite that, a deeper look at the stats shows that Marin's service, for some probably quite surprisingly, doesn't have the efficiency of the very best in the business. Over his entire ATP Tour career up to date, Cilic has just 56% of the 1st services in the game, in comparison Djokovic 65%, Federer...

Serena Williams – Probably the best female service of all time

Serena's service during the 2018 Wimbledon Championships while also adding few images from far back in 2003. It is interesting to see that her core service fundamentals have been quite the same in 2003 already and this speaks for the quality of her coaching before that. In short, Serena's service is very simple, well-focused at the decisive elements (not quite clear to many in the tennis field) and practically free of any potentially disturbing idiosyncrasies. Some of the main decisive elements to be mentioned are a relaxed balanced starting position, a very stable quite high toss, a delated...

Sebastian Korda – Clean 1st Service 3.0

Below, I am focusing on his 1st service technique as I have analyzed it during the 2017 French Open Junior Championships. Sebastian's service is dominated on the backswing part by a calm body pretension buildup and an almost straight tossing motion, both free of any major idiosyncrasies. This is followed by a solid push-off leading to a good extension and then by a very.....

Denis Shapovalov – Powerful 1st service 3.0

From the strokes, the service belongs to one of Shapovalov's strengths, but small improvements (part of the Tennis 3.0 Code seem to be missing) could probably make this leftie service to an even more of a constant weapon. Below, I am showing some of Denis' services at both the 2017 French and the 2017 US.Open. The opening of the racket...

Julia Goerges – Dangerous Service 3.0

While looking at Julia's stokes, the service, despite certain rather complicated looking idiosyncratic action in the takeback, must be considered as her biggest weapon. Besides Julia's almost ideal body build with long extremities, mainly two aspects play a big role here: perfect...

Anastasija Sevastova – Forehand 3.0

Anastasija is mainly an aggressive baseliner and forehand belongs to her main weapons. As can be seen below, she fulfills well the main TENNIS 3.0 principle, which is the body energy dominance of the strokes demonstrated by the long elbow extension away from the body against the target. Small timing details and certain stiffness (mainly in the direct stance as shown below) can sometimes partly block her....

Jack Sock – Strong service and forehand combination

In general, Jack has mastered in both strokes the art of the close to optimal body energy unloading (=Tennis 3.0), which goes over the targeted pronation of the entire limb (long-axis pronation). This targeted pronation is possible when, among other conditions, a perfect eye control of the ball leading to optimal spacing is present. Some of the other conditions necessary...

Jack Sock – Service 3.0

....they also made some improvements on Jack's backhand and then some serious work has been done on Jack's service, which can be considered as quite a weapon now. In this article, I would like to focus on some qualities of this "new Sock service", as he showed them at the ATP 500 tournament in Basel (SUI) few weeks ago already, just before the above mentioned Paris event....

Ernesto Escobedo – Suboptimal service & forehand combination

But in both cases shown here, Ernesto didn't create an optimal space to be able to throw his elbow and racket away from the body against the target and the result was in both cases just a mediocre forehand, which was not putting the opponent under significant pressure. The main reason behind the suboptimal spacing might then not be primarily in the poor footwork capacity, but much rather in...