Genie Bouchard – Service details
Eugenie “Genie” Bouchard (*1994 / CAN) has had a stellar year in 2014 when she reached the finals of Wimbledon (lost to Petra Kvitova / CZE) as well as the semifinals of both the Australian and the French Open. That year she also reached her career high of #5. As a former long-time student of Florida-based Nick Saviano, Genie has an excellent foundation in the efficient stroke technique into the direction of Tennis 3.0 and it was my real pleasure to have had the possibility to bring my inputs into her technical development until 2014. Let’s hope that Genie and her team have learned from the mistakes coming after her great results in 2014 and that based on her great foundation, she will thrive under her new coach (from the end of 2016 on) Thomas Högstedt (SWE).
Genie’s service, in particular, didn’t get so much attention yet, but despite some remaining improvement possibilities concerning mainly the increase of its margin, it has a lot of good aspects, mainly around the body energy integration into the stroke. Genie, on her good days, mostly gains quite high percentages out of her serving points. But, because of the limited margin, her service percentages can slide down quite a bit on her less good days. Some interesting details can be seen on the photos shown below. It might be just my subjective view of the things, but in my personal opinion Genie’s service margin was rather higher in 2014 (photos on the bottom) than in 2016:
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the match – 1 of 4 – start in a comfortable position – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the match – 2 of 4 – push-off towards the quite high tossed ball – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1 st service in the match – 3 of 4 – full extension towards the impact, excellent eye control of the ball – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the match – 4 of 4 – end of follow through 1 – targeted pronation, in this case with a very low margin as Genie leaves quite fast the position of the full pronation, on the other side high center of gravity as well as solid integration of the dominant hip and shoulder motion into the court help – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 2nd service in the match – topspin – 1 of 2 – push-off from the cocking phase towards the tossed ball / intended impact under a perfect eye control – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 2nd service in the match – topspin – 2 of 2 – follow through 1 = targeted pronation. Also here the pronation typical for the topspin service as well as the typical arch of the arm is rather limited, which implies limited spin and hence limited margin – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the match – 1 of 3 – on the way from the cocking phase to the impact – great eye control of the ball, nice racket axis set-up – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the match – 2 of 3 – follow through 1 = targeted pronation. As the hitting arm stays in the full pronation position a bit longer here, the general margin of this service is rather higher – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1 st service in the match – 3 of 3 – follow through 2 = relaxation, Genie brought her center of gravity and the hitting shoulder nicely into the court – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 2nd service – topspin in the match – 1 of 2 – push-off from the cocking phase to the impact, excellent eye control – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 2nd service – topspin in the match – 2 of 2 – follow through 1 = targeted pronation. The pronation and arch shown here are giving the feeling that the margin of this topspin service might be higher than of the one shown above – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 2nd service – topspin in the match – shortly after the impact – eyes still remain perfectly focused at the impact zone, also note the very high center of gravity, Genie generates a significant amount of power off the ground – 1 of 1 – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1 st service in the match – 1 of 3 – excellent push-off from the cocking position towards the impact, excellent high elbow position, racket axis set-up and eye control of the ball – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1 st service in the match – 2 of 3 – follow through 1 = targeted pronation. In this particular service, the rather limited pronation and lower elbow position are pushing the margin down. Otherwise, the body energy integration is excellent – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the match – 3 of 3 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2016 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the practice – 1 of 4 – start in a comfortable position – 2014 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the practice – 2 of 4 – toss / backswing, excellent eye control – 2014 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the practice – 3 of 4 – push-off / cocking phase with excellent high elbow position and good racket axis line-up – 2014 US.Open – NYC
Genie Bouchard (*94 / CAN) – 1st service in the practice – 4 of 4 – follow through 1 = targeted pronation giving the feeling of a slightly higher margin than at the photos from 2016 shown above – 2014 US.Open – NYC
This article focuses just on certain aspects and is not intended as a complete stroke analysis. Further photos and more detailed analysis & information including the information about the optimal “Tennis 3.0 Code” application in order to increase the service margins are available upon request at drmgb11(at)gmail.com
Photos (August 2014/2016) & text (January 2017) copyright by Dr. Martin G. Baroch
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