Over the past two decades, tennis has become an increasingly powerful sport from baseline and where it is crucial to maintain the same pace with both forehand and backhand. The return to the serve has become increasingly important in the male tour and the approach to the net is almost extinct, as well as the slice approach to play good volleys.
These changes have had important repercussions on the technical side. The one-handed backhand is almost extinct and very few top players have this approach, having become common opinion that the two-handed backhand is much more effective for the needs of modern tennis.
Richard Gasquet© @WeAreTennisFR X account
It’s no coincidence that Italian Jannik Sinner and Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz – the two main exponents of the Next Gen and the only Slam winners in 2024 – both perform a two-handed backhand. Two legends like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal also perform the two-handed backhand, while Roger Federer was an exception in this respect.
King Roger’s one handed backhand was really amazing, but it created a lot of problems when he faced Nadal on red clay. Among the best one-handed backhands of this generation are those of Stan Wawrinka and Richard Gasquet, who were able to shoot very strong with these shots.
A clear trend
Almost all young tennis players play two-handed backhand and this trend will become more and more established in the future of men’s tennis. The last prominent exponents of the one-handed backhand remained Stefanos Tsitsipas, Grigor Dimitrov and Lorenzo Musetti, but they are exceptions in a reality that is now well delineated.“For the first time in the ATP Finals history, there will be no players with a one-handed backhand” – Carlos Navarro wrote on his X profile. “Federer, Thiem or Tsitsipas were holding down the fort in recent years, but the 2024 edition of the ATP Finals will feature a sad, yet noteworthy feat” – he added.
In recent years, fans and professionals have often complained that the players have all become very similar and that the surfaces have been too much standardized. The contrast of styles is crucial to make a sport attractive and interesting, which is why ATP will have to work hard to make its product even more palatable in every corner of the world.
Roger Federer© YouTube screenshot
In a recent interview with ‘GQ’, 20-time Grand Slam champion Federer expressed his point of view on this topic: “What we get more and more nowadays is that I wish that sometimes we had a little bit more variety, and also back and forth coming to the net a little bit more, not just side to side. We’ll see where the game will go.
But obviously the problem is when you have a lot of similar players playing against each other, a lot of the points end up being played in a similar fashion. And my goal on the tour was always… playing every point in a similar way against my opponent is what he wants. What he doesn’t want is if I mix it up and have variety. So for me, seeing two guys play against each other and have 20 same points back to back to back, come on. It can be very interesting. It’s like an arm wrestle. But I like to say, ‘Let’s not enter the arm wrestle. Let’s enter another game.’”
New solutions
This year, ATP has tried to make the surfaces more diversified and very fast courts have been presented in both Cincinnati and Paris-Bercy Masters 1000. Many players have complained about the excessive speed of the surface, especially 4-time Grand Slam champion and former World No.1 Carlos Alcaraz, who was prematurely eliminated in both Ohio and the French capital.
Shanghai Rolex Masters© @canal_tenis X account
In the latest edition of the show called ‘Sans Filet’, top analyst Benoit Maylin explained that it is crucial for tennis to become more varied: “Give me fast courts! Indoor tennis should always be played on a fast surface. Stop with this homogenization of the courts, you have to show that you have the ability to adapt. It’s always the same speed with players sending you cartridges for 18 hours.
In Turin for the Masters, it will not be at all the same short as in Bercy. It is a fairly fast short but not as much. We should have the opportunity since it’s the masters tournament to have surface changes to see if guys can adapt. This is the advantage of tennis, it’s to think you can play on any type of surface and show that you have the ability to adapt, to modify your game to succeed in winning. That’s what makes tennis so attractive.”