I have played tennis since I was 8 years old, played junior tennis, was coached by Harry Hopman (the famous Australian Davis Cup coach), still play to this day, and follow the game closely. For over 25 years I have had US Open subscription tickets (meaning I have tickets to every session of the Open), now have courtside seats, and attended my first US Open in the 70’s at the West Side Tennis Club in Forrest Hills. Also, in the last few years, I have attended Wimbledon and the French Open, and also the Monte Carlo Master 1000 tournament (see picture above), and I am planning, in the next two years, to complete my tennis grand slam by attending the Australian Open. So I have some background, experience, and credibility to opine about the game. So as a change of pace this week, I will be talking about possible trends going forward for the game of tennis, particularly with regard to the one-handed backhand.

When I started playing, a one-handed backhand was the rule, rather than the exception, with many of the top men’s players being 6′ or under (e.g., McEnroe, Connors, Laver). The backhand was commonly hit with slice or a flat stroke, and the racquets were predominately wooden (one exception being Connors’ T-2000 racquet, which was steel) with gut strings and a small racquet face. Today, the top players are between 6′ and 6′ 3″ tall (Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Murray, Sampras), most of the tour players have two-handed backhands, top-spin is the predominate stroke, the racquets are more powerful with larger faces, and are made of a composite materials, with the strings now predominately being made of synthetic materials rather than gut. This has lead to exaggerated western grips on the forward, and the balls jumping higher in the air after hitting the court, and more powerful shots off both the forehand and backhand.

Due to these developments, it has become much more difficult for those players with a one-handed backhand to hit and control a ball that is bouncing higher in their strike zone, plus it is more difficult to hit the angles possible with a two-handled backhand. But in the future, there may be trend back towards the one-handed backhand since there are more taller players (6’4 and above) coming into the game (e.g., Fritz, Zverev, in addition to veteran players Isner, del Potro, Karlovic, and Cilic), so topspin will have less effect on a taller player since even the highest bounce will be in their strike zone. For the taller player, movement and hitting low balls is a bigger problem, so with a one-handed backhand, they will have greater reach both sideways, which can somewhat offset less lateral movement, and reaching downwards, for hitting lower bouncing shots (a good shot to hit against such taller players).  Time will tell, but I thought I would get my opinion out there first for posterity reasons.