One Hand or Two? The Enduring Drama of the Tennis Backhand

There is no shot in tennis as revealing as the backhand. The forehand is where power lives, but the backhand is where character shows. Watch a player long enough and their backhand tells you almost everything: whether they trust their technique under pressure, whether they can defend as well as attack, and, increasingly, which era of the sport shaped them. It is also the shot that quietly divides tennis into two tribes. Do you play with one hand or two?

What is a backhand in tennis?

The backhand is simply the stroke you play on the opposite side to your dominant hand. For a right-hander, it covers everything hit on the left side of the body, with the racket swinging across from the non-dominant side rather than out from the shoulder as a forehand does. That mechanical awkwardness is the whole story of the backhand. Because it does not come as naturally as the forehand, players have spent more than a century arguing about the best way to tame it, and the answer they reach shapes the rest of their game.

Two broad solutions exist. The single-handed backhand uses one hand on the grip, offering reach, elegance and a beautiful slice. The two-handed backhand adds the non-dominant hand for extra support, trading a little reach for a lot of stability. Everything else, from the grip you hold to choosing a racket that suits your game, tends to follow from that first decision.

One hand or two? A short history

For most of tennis history, one hand was the norm. The classical single-hander, all clean lines and effortless timing, was how the game was taught: think of Ken Rosewall's flawless slice, or later the artistry of Roger Federer, Stan Wawrinka and Richard Gasquet, whose backhand was so admired it became a thing of legend in its own right. On the women's side, Justine Henin's single-hander is still cited as one of the most beautiful strokes ever played, and Steffi Graf built a career around a skidding sliced backhand.

Then came the revolution. Players such as Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert helped popularise the two-handed backhand in the 1970s, and once a generation grew up copying them the balance shifted for good. Today the two-hander is overwhelmingly dominant at the top of the sport. Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner all play with two hands, and the classical single-hander has become a rarity worth savouring.

The single-hander's slow fade

The numbers are stark. In 2013, more than sixty men inside the world's top 300 played with a single-handed backhand. By the 2026 season that figure had fallen to around nineteen. Lorenzo Musetti has become the standard-bearer, for a spell the lone single-hander near the top of the men's game, with Stefanos Tsitsipas, Grigor Dimitrov and Denis Shapovalov keeping the tradition flickering behind him. For more than fifty years, since the ATP rankings began in 1973, every single year-end top 10 has contained at least one single-hander. That streak now hangs by a thread, and even Federer has spoken publicly about why the shot he made famous is disappearing.

So if you have ever wondered who has the best backhand in tennis history, the honest answer is that most of the contenders, from Rosewall to Wawrinka to Henin, played the version the modern game is quietly leaving behind.

Why the two-hander took over

The shift is not fashion, it is physics. The professional game has grown faster and more physical: bigger serves, heavier topspin and balls that kick up high above shoulder height. A two-handed backhand handles all of that more easily. The second hand gives extra power and, crucially, control on the return of serve, letting a player block back a 130 mph delivery and still direct it. High, heavy balls that jump up towards the shoulder are far more comfortable with two hands than one, which is one reason the single-hander has struggled most on slow, high-bouncing clay.

Two hands are also more forgiving to learn. The non-dominant hand does much of the steering, so the stroke holds together even when the timing is slightly off. For a young player trying to survive on a modern tour, reliability beats romance.

Why the single-hander refuses to die

And yet the one-hander endures, because it can do things two hands cannot. The reach is greater, so a stretched single-hander can still flick a winner from a ball a two-hander would only be able to push back. It flows naturally into a sliced backhand, that low, skidding shot that changes rhythm and buys time. It disguises beautifully at the net, and it pairs elegantly with an attacking, forward-moving style. When it works, nothing in the sport looks better.

How to hit a backhand: the basics

Whichever camp you join, the foundations are the same. It starts with the right grip: most single-handers use an eastern or semi-western backhand grip to get on top of the ball, while two-handers typically keep the dominant hand in a continental grip and add the other hand above it. From there the key is an early shoulder turn. Turn your upper body so your back is nearly facing the net, load your weight, then swing up and through the ball, meeting it well in front of your body rather than beside you. Contact point is everything on the backhand side; late is disaster, early is a winner.

If topspin is your aim, the finish matters as much as the swing, and the strings you choose play their part too. A softer, spin-friendly set-up rewards the low-to-high brush, and it is well worth understanding how the strings you choose shape the feel of every backhand you hit.

Which should a club player play?

For most beginners and improvers, two hands is the sensible starting point. It is easier to control, kinder on the wrist and quicker to make match-ready, which is why most coaches teach it first. The single-hander is a wonderful goal, but it demands earlier preparation and stronger timing, so it tends to suit players who already have a feel for the ball and love the slice and the net game it unlocks.

The good news is that neither choice locks you in. Plenty of two-handers add a single-handed slice as a second string, giving them the best of both worlds. Whatever you decide, it is worth being honest about your own game before you commit, and picking equipment to match; you can browse our range of tennis rackets when you are ready to find a frame that flatters your backhand rather than fighting it.

The backhand may be the harder wing to master, but that is exactly why it is the more interesting one. In an age when the two-hander has all but won the argument on tour, every single-hander that survives feels a little like an act of defiance, a reminder that tennis still has room for beauty as well as efficiency. One hand or two, the shot is worth falling in love with.