Tag:body energy unloading

Novak Djokovic – Solid Service 3.0

Novak's service is usually not making the biggest headlines, but since he found back to a good service rhythm during the spring and mainly summer of 2018, he can rely on it quite well again. His highly solid 1st service fulfills very well all the requirements of a great Service 3.0 with a helix.....

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...

Marius Copil – Clean Service 3.0

....his service, which I would currently consider as probably the cleanest Service 3.0 with a perfect helix form on the ATP Tour. Copil surely profits in his service from a tall body with long extremities but at 191 cm (6'3'') he can be considered as not that extremely tall player when comparing him to the likes of John Isner, Milos Raonic or Marin Cilic. It was clearly visible in his two-set winning Basel match against the significantly taller top 10 player Marin Cilic (CRO) who brings with his 198 cm (6'6'') even more impressive bodily parameters to the court, that an almost perfect technique leading to an optimal...

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...

Petra Kvitova – Forehand improvement to a higher 3.0 standard

Then over the years, the forehand has brought Petra some winners, but often also rather a quite serious amount of errors as some of the Forehand 3.0 principles have been often missing in her game. It was the reason why I have repeatedly criticized her forehand, (also) here on this site, in the past and why I have mentioned some hints towards possible improvements, also to Petra's surrounding, mainly since the later part of the 2015 season. It might be just a pure coincidence, but especially after...

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.....

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...

Catherine Bellis – Forehand 3.0 with potential

Below, I am comparing Catherine's forehand during her 3rd round match at the 2014 Orange Bowl (against Shiskina / USA - the first tie-break set was very tight there) and her forehand in a practice match against Kayla Day (USA) during the 2017 French Open. At her example is then also quite well possible to explain the certain mystery of the stances.....

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...

Martina Hingis – Service over the course of the time

For many years, the service could have been considered as Martina's biggest weakness, mainly due to a suboptimal form of the pronation with the elbow staying rather too low and the racket traveling rather too much on the horizontal plane after the impact. Over the course of the years, Martina was able to improve it a bit and her pronation did look much better later in her career. With the elbow.....