Tag:DrMGBTennis

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...

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...

Bernard Tomic – Service 3.0 – look back

One of the biggest would be his service. At 196cm (6'5''), Bernard has quite excellent bodily parameters for a powerful service and also his service technique is, despite certain weakness in his legs and core, since years very solid. The below-presented photos are from the 2011 Masters Series tournament in..

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

Stefanos Tsitsipas – One-handed backhand 3.0 then and now

The one-handed backhand can be considered as Stefanos' signature stroke. He belongs to the rather small group of the young players playing the one-handed stroke on the backhand side. In general, the one-handed backhand variety gives a better chance for the acceleration but can be also rather more challenging...

Gael Monfils – Sound Service 3.0

Gael belongs to the best servers on the pro tour and his service mostly perfectly fulfills the highest Service 3.0 criteria of body energy dominance of the stroke. A typical sign of this is Gael's excellent targeted pronation in the "follow through 1". He appears to have discovered the essential aspects of the TENNIS 3.0 CODE for the service.

Marin Cilic – Standard Tennis 3.0 strokes

Regarding service, forehand and backhand, Marin Cilic can actually serve as a certain standard prototype for the TENNIS 3.0 style of stroke production, where body energy dominates the stroke dynamics as well as racket position in space and where elbow reaches longest possible distance from the center of gravity during and after the impact.

Andy Murray – 1st service with rather lower margin

The above numbers tell us that Andy's service margins are mostly (besides aces) quite below the ones of his closest competitors. It's mainly his excellent return and rally game that make him to such a successful player he is. From the technical point of view, as I personally see it, a limited pronation and a rather unclear distinction between the follow through 1 and follow through 2 are the reasons behind Andy's lower service margins. Interestingly enough, Ivan Lendl (1st serve 56%, overall service points won 66%) had similar issues in his career.

Angelique Kerber – rather unnatural leftie service

Angelique's service seems rather a bit unnatural as she was born right-handed and was switched to a left-handed player in her youth. In tennis in general and even more so in women's tennis, playing left-handed must be seen as quite a significant advantage and this is the reason why some parents and coaches with big goals switch their natural born right-handers to the left-handers at a young age, quite a typical example here is also Rafael Nadal (ESP)