Jelena Ostapenko laughed when asked if she knew she hits her forehand harder than some of the top men’s players can.

“When I was younger, I was feeling my backhand much better,” Ostapenko, a newly crowned Grand Slam winner, told The Post. “I think many girls think their backhand is better than their forehand. But I was working a lot on my forehand, and I think I can probably hit my forehand much faster than my backhand [now].”

Last month, Ostapenko won the French Open, a tournament she started at 19 years old (turning 20 on the day she won her semifinal match) and unseeded. Her miraculous run included upsets of heavy favorites such as Sam Stosur and Caroline Wozniacki before she dismantled another in Simona Halep in the finals, where she became the first unseeded player to win the French since Margaret Scriven in 1933.

Much of Ostapenko’s success at Roland Garros derived from her forehand, a shot that clocks in at 76 mph. (For comparison, men’s world No. 1 Andy Murray averages 73 mph on his forehand.) She hit 299 winners in the tournament, far more than any other player, including men’s champion Rafael Nadal. She has an aggressive and fearless style of play, favoring a forehand cross-court shot, but is not afraid to go up the lines either. She attributes her power to time in the gym and her natural gifts.

“I was just working on the court to improve my forehand and make less mistakes and to bring some more power,” she said. “If I play aggressive, I always have power. I could still improve it, and now that it’s better, I still think I can improve it.”

As she approaches Wimbledon, a grass-court tournament where the ball moves faster and the points are shorter, Ostapenko is coming to a surface she considers her favorite. She loves the old-fashioned Grand Slam’s tradition of all-white attire. Most of all, she isn’t about to rein in the fearlessness she’s exhibited all year long.

“I’m just going to go the same way as I started to play Roland Garros,” said Ostapenko, who was the junior Wimbledon champion in 2014. “Of course, [winning the French Open] gave me more confidence, but I still have to kind of deal with that pressure because I think a lot of people will expect more from me because I won a Grand Slam.”

Ostapenko is 29-11 this season. She reached the finals in Charleston and the semifinals in Prague. She credits her success on the court to her time in the dance studio, where she ballroom dances approximately four times a week when she’s able to return home to her native Latvia from travel on the WTA Tour. A fan of samba and foxtrot, Ostapenko said the quick steps required in dance have translated to the tennis court because it makes her mindful of her footwork.

Ostapenko has been coached and trained by her mother, Jelena Jakoleva, since she started playing tennis. But earlier this year, she linked up with clay-court expert Anabel Medina Garrigues, with whom she shares an agent, Ugo Colombini.

Medina Garrigues was introduced to the rising Latvian star three years ago when Colombini asked her to watch Ostapenko play. Medina Garrigues said she immediately recognized Ostapenko’s talent, though a coaching arrangement never came to fruition until now.

“In 2015, [Jelena] came to Valencia to do the preseason for two weeks, and she asked me to work a little bit more with her, but I couldn’t because she wanted someone who could work with her full-time,” Medina Garrigues told The Post.

A two-time French Open doubles champion and still a solid player in her own right, Medina Garrigues, 34, has been sidelined due to a shoulder injury since 2016. Her time away from the court rehabbing her shoulder for a hopeful return to the tour has allowed her to work full-time with Ostapenko.

“[Ostapenko] is a very aggressive player,” Medina Garrigues said. “The only thing I was trying to do was to make her pay more attention, to be organized on the court. When I say organized, I mean try to decide the direction of the shot … because she already has a strong shot, so she has to be more clear with the tactic, just make her see how to play the point.”

Medina Garrigues said she feels opponents feared Ostapenko’s backhand, which she favored early in her career. That forced her foes at the French Open to play to Ostapenko’s forehand — and she deployed that shot to devastating effect. Medina Garrigues said she hasn’t tinkered with much of Ostapenko’s game, but she did focus on refining the forehand.

“She is a very dangerous player when she has good feeling with the ball. When she has confidence, she can be very dangerous from both sides,” Medina Garrigues said. “But we were working a lot on her forehand, we were working on the impact of the ball in front of her, and she has to be aggressive all the time and not pushing the ball.”

Medina Garrigues is heading to Wimbledon with Ostapenko, who is seeded No. 13 and won’t be sneaking up on anybody this time. She will be branded as a Grand Slam winner with her not-so-secret-anymore forehand. But this could just be the beginning of a powerful player, in the mold of Maria Sharapova and Monica Seles, to emerge in the vacuum following the reign of the Williams sisters.

“I think she is a great player,” Medina Garrigues said. “She already showed to the people, to the crowd, to the fans and tour, that she can beat good players, she can play good in important moments and won a Grand Slam. That means she can be in the future a really, really good player.

“How I always say to her is she can be as good as she wants. … She has the game, she has the mentality, and she has to work a lot and make a goal and go for it. Where she puts the goal, she can arrive there.”