Already there he did belong to the rather smaller group of players understanding quite well some of the main elements of the Forehand 3.0 Code while often successfully following the necessary reference points leading to the body energy dominance of his forehand strokes...
(Under construction) As a result, the players are developing the wrong image of the ideal stroke in their mind and use this image as the base for their stroke production. This ill-conceived process can start already with small children during their first attempts at hitting of the ball. Even today, most of the children are starting to learn forehand based on the elbow flexion instead of pronation, which is easy to teach, when done properly. This wrong guidance then often continues at the following stages all the way into professional tennis..
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...
Below, I am comparing Reilley's forehands at these two above mentioned events. I am surely aware that the coordination and an exact footwork are challenging at Reilly's size, but what I am focusing at is the way how he approaches the given strokes as this gives me certain information about the mental image of the stroke in his mind. In the case of an optimal "3 Step Tennis Stroke Regulation", the player puts the priority at the creation....
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....
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...
One of the bases of Jelena's success is her powerful forehand, which was clicked as having higher average speed than the forehands of the men's #1 seed Andy Murray (GBR) during the 2017 French Open. Jelena's forehand has an excellent foundation with a form of the takeback/backswing, which is bringing the racket into the appropriate hitting position very early. She doesn't have any potentially disturbing....
..back then, I was quite impressed by Jack's forehand, which he was unlike most other young Americans of his generation (Harrison, Young, Kudla, etc.) dominating rather by the body than by the arm action. He seemed to me like one who was able to stay immune to the widespread "infection" of the technique focusing at highest possible racket head speed and largely ignoring the importance of the body energy for the successful combination of power and stability/control in the strokes. It was, besides others, also Jack who brought me to the development of the model for the ideal body energy dominated modern forehand - Forehand 3.0...
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.
Rebeka Masarova (*1999 / SUI) with her WTA ranking of #314 (as of July 18, 2016) is currently the world highest ranked player before reaching the 17th birthday. Rebeka, who won the 2016 French Open junior event a few weeks ago, considers service as her favorite stroke. She has Slovak and Spanish roots and is currently being coached by her mother. As all very successful Swiss female tennis players of the past over 20 years, Rebeka was developed largely privately outside of the regular Swiss Tennis Association program!
