were suddenly a surplus of exotic sightings at the
French Open this year. Eight of the men in the round of 16 used the single-handed topspin backhand, and four of them reached the quarterfinals before running into the double-fisted reality of Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, David Ferrer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
A week later, switching from clay to grass, all the semifinalists in Halle, Germany, used the one-hander, led by Federer, who went on to win the title.
Wimbledon, where the ball still bounces lower than on other surfaces and where Federer has won the title seven times, should be another display case, particularly with second-rung players like Richard Gasquet, Tommy Haas and Stan Wawrinka — one-handers all — in fine form.
So is all this a case of wringing the hands (and the alarm bell) too soon?
Perhaps, if you consider that 8 of the top 30 men in the rankings use one-handers, including 3 of the top 10: Federer, Gasquet and Wawrinka. Perhaps, if you consider that one of the most promising young talents, the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, 22, uses a one-hander, too.
But absolutely not when you consider that only 3 of the top 50 women use a one-hand backhand: the Italians Roberta Vinci and Francesca Schiavone and the Spaniard Carla Suárez Navarro, none of whom is in the top 10. And absolutely not when you consider what appears to be in the pipeline.
“Out of the current top juniors, we haven’t been able to find a boy or girl that plays the backhand with just one hand,” Isabelle Gemmel, administrator for junior and senior tennis at the International Tennis Federation, said in an e-mail message.
Brad Gilbert, a top American coach, frequently visits the Bollettieri Academy in Florida to work with promising junior players.
“Every once in a while, when you see a one-handed backhand, you stop and go ‘Whoa!”’ Gilbert said. “I could be generous and say it’s 20 to 1, but it’s more like 40 to 1. There are a few hundred kids down there playing and it’s just very few and far between. I think 10 to 15 to 20 years from now, you’ll be shocked to see one.”
Clearly, tennis has come a long way since Billy Carter, brother of former President Jimmy Carter, objected that a two-handed backhand would not leave him “a free hand to hold the beer.”
It has come even further from the 1930s, when the Australian men’s star Viv McGrath was the first top-flight player to use the two-handed backhand. “I doubt if one person in a thousand could learn to make such a stroke more efficiently with two hands than with one,” wrote Wilbert Allison, a top American player at the time.
Although past stars like Gustavo Kuerten and Pete Sampras abandoned the two-hander as juniors, they are now better stories than examples. The leading players who use one hand exclusively today are generally older. In Paris, the average age of the male one-handers in the round of 16 was 29 years and 7 months, compared with 27 years for those without. As for the women, Vinci is 30, and Schiavone turns 33 on Sunday.
The one-handed drive has its advantages: extra reach in an era when the game has accelerated; more chance of a successful shot when off balance; a greater element of surprise when switching to a drop shot; and a capacity — some say — to generate more acute angles. But the reasons for the preeminence of the two-hander are clear. In a game of increasing athleticism, two hands offer a more solid platform for countering big power and spin of the sort Nadal can produce with his whipping forehand or Serena Williams can produce with her serve
“The contact point is a little bit later with a two-hander, so you can hit more open stance,” said Dave Miley, the I.T.F.’s director of development. “With a two-hander, you’re basically hitting a forehand with the other hand, and as a result you have a little more time and more strength.”.The stroke’s popularity has also reflected the thirst for junior success. Two tiny hands are often much more effective than one, and the two-hander is generally considered easier to teach.
“If you’re thinking about an 8-year-old and saying, ‘Oh we’re going to build the next Pete Sampras or the next Roger Federer’ and go with the one-hander, that’s such a pipe dream,” Gilbert said. “You’re trying to get early success, and it’s just easier. It’s so hard physically to hit a ball when you are 8 or 9 years old with one hand when it’s up above your shoulders. As someone who played with one hand my whole life, the biggest difference for young kids is it’s so much easier to return a serve.”
The mystery is why a younger generation raised on a television diet of Federer’s single-handed brilliance apparently doesn’t feel much like emulating it. “Are we going to see a little wave in five or six years of a bunch of kids who idolized Roger and are trying it?” Masur wondered.
But the truly intriguing development is the I.T.F.’s rule change last year, which mandates smaller courts and, above all, lighter, slower, lower-bouncing balls for players 10 and under.
The goal is to make the game more accessible and to encourage greater variety. Mini-tennis courts and lighter balls have been used in Europe for more than a decade and were credited with helping the former Belgian star Henin develop her magnificent one-hander. Could the rule change help reverse the tactical tide?
“I would never tell a kid to switch one way or the other; I think you take what is naturally given to you,” said Patrick McEnroe, head of player development at the U.S. Tennis Association. “I do think, though, that in watching a lot of the kids with the softer balls, etc., that there’s a chance you’ll see more one-handers develop.”
There are promising young exceptions today, however, most of them from the ancestral homes of attacking tennis.
Bradley Mousley and Jay Andrijic, who won the Australian Open junior boys doubles titles this year, both deploy single-handed backhands. So does Alex Rybakov, a 16-year-old American who just won the I.T.F. International Grass Court Championship in Philadelphia. Girls are rarer.
But as McEnroe notes, the dearth of one-handed topspin strokes in the juniors comes as the one-handed slice is increasingly critical to success at the top. Federer has long used his as a rhythm shifter. Nadal, Djokovic and Andy Murray are also fine practitioners of the single-handed slice, with Nadal making particularly big improvements.
“He’s actually using a side-spin backhand; it’s become an unbelievable shot,” said Miguel Crespo, the I.T.F.’s development research officer.
Mats Wilander, who was ranked No.1 in 1988, was one of the first of the stars with a two-handed backhand to make effective use of the one-handed slice.
“Now it’s almost a prerequisite,” McEnroe said. “And I can tell you that we have quite a few of our players who are really good two-handed players that we work with on the slice every day.”
