Tag:US.Open

Richard Gasquet – One-handed backhand 3.0

(UNDER CONSTRUCTION) The equally highly talented as well as early developed son of two tennis teachers Richard Gasquet (*1986 / FRA), was since his childhood considered as a big prodigy of French tennis. Already before his 10th birthday, he made the cover of the French magazine Tennis. I can well remember seeing small Richard, who was given the chance to breathe the air of the big tennis early on, practice at the courts of Roland Garros during the French Open in the late '90s and admiring his wonderful

David Gofin – Service 3.0 varieties

David has a quite clean service technique, which clearly fulfills the Service 3.0 parameters. Over the course of his ATP Tour career (as of the end of December 2018), he has 58% of the 1st services in while winning 71% of the points on them. His ace probability of 43% per game is quite solid and the double fault probability of 29% rather slightly higher. While winning 63% of the total of his service points and 78% of all of his service games played, he is clearly behind the very best tour players. In David's case,....

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...

Xiyu Wang – Mistake-prone aggressive forehand

Wang has an almost ideal tennis body with long extremities. For her age, she has already quite highly developed tactical varieties and is well capable of an attacking all-court game, which she applied quite successfully also during her recent US Open campaign. Her overall tactical possibilities are then in my opinion slightly limited by certain technical weaknesses in her strokes. In this article, I would like to look at her forehand. Wang is playing her forehand in a very aggressive manner, but this stroke is prone to rather frequent mistakes, mainly due to the...

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....

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...

Petra Kvitova – Two-handed backhand return

In general, being able to hit the return either in the open stance or with the stepping in leads mostly to a much more dominant return with body energy involvement than stepping across, which mostly blocks a significant amount of the body energy. The ability to dominate a high amount of the returns from the outside leg (also on the forehand side) is one of the key elements in the game of the very top players. It brings, besides the already mentioned body energy dominance, also....

Sloane Stephens – Service 3.0 over the time

It was my real pleasure to have had the chance to work with Sloane in 2010-11 and updating her service was maybe the most enjoyable instant success of my coaching career in tennis. During our first meeting on the court in Florida in 2010, Sloane, as this is quite usual with most of the young players until today, didn't have a clear understanding about the (targeted) pronation. Following short verbal, visual and proprioceptive explanation of this motion and its key elements (including the Service 3.0 Code) from my side, Sloane wanted