The three tennis backhands every serious player should know: one-handed, two-handed, slice

Of the top 100 players on the ATP tour in August 2026, ninety-two hit their backhand with two hands. Only eight play it with one. The highest-ranked one-hander in the game today, Lorenzo Musetti at world number five, is the only single-hander in the top thirty by any meaningful distance. Stan Wawrinka, Richard Gasquet and Roger Federer, the three men most people would name if you asked them to picture a beautiful one-handed backhand, have all left the tour. The shot that defined every generation of tennis before 1974 is now something you have to search for.

Which is a strange thing to be true about a shot many club players still learn first with one hand.

There are three backhands in tennis: the one-hander, the two-hander, and, as every serious player knows and craftily uses, the slice. Three shots, three grip stories, and one octagonal racket handle where all of them live. The one-hander that dominated tennis for a hundred years now survives mostly in club tennis for the older tennis generation as the two-hander took over from the mid-1970s and has never let go. And the slice, which is neither a primary backhand nor an alternative to one, but a separate shot you have to own regardless of which side of the one-hand or two-hand argument you picked as a child. The bevel numbering used throughout this piece matches the forehand grips flagship, so the same octagon carries both halves of the game.

The moment the shot changed, and why

Tennis was invented in the 1870s in England. For almost the next hundred years, the backhand was hit with one hand. Two Australians, Vivian McGrath and John Bromwich, played with two hands in the 1930s and were treated as eccentrics. Every serious coach through the middle of the twentieth century taught the one-hander as the only proper backhand. The two-hander was for children who could not yet hold a racket, and children were expected to grow out of it.

Then, at almost exactly the same moment in the early 1970s, three players arrived on the professional tour who had never grown out of it. Chris Evert picked up her first racket at six and used two hands because she was too small to hold it in one. Björn Borg started young with a wooden racket that was too heavy for one hand. Jimmy Connors, coached by his mother Gloria, was taught the two-hander from the start. All three won on every surface. All three won Grand Slams. And by 1974, when Borg and Evert both won their first majors at Roland Garros, the argument was essentially over.

The two-hander's rise is the second-biggest technical shift in the history of tennis, after the semi-western forehand. Every generation since has been overwhelmingly double-handed. Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Pete Sampras (a rare late-century exception with the one-hander), Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal (as a lefty), Iga Świątek, Aryna Sabalenka, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner. The default is set.

The single-hander survives, but as a specialist choice. It survives most obviously on clay, where the ball sits up in the strike zone and the extra reach and the flatter contact are worth the return-of-serve compromise. It survives least on hard courts, where the modern flat ball comes through too fast for the one-hander's longer swing to keep up. Every one-hander on the tour today wins a larger share of their matches on clay than on hard.

The one-handed backhand

The classical one-handed grip is the eastern backhand, and on a right-hander it puts the base knuckle of the index finger on bevel 1 of the octagonal handle. If you hold the racket out in front of you with the head vertical and look down at the top of the grip, bevel 1 is the flat surface directly on top. This is the grip Sampras used, the grip Edberg used, the grip Federer used through his entire career. Slightly stronger variants exist. Gasquet's grip sat closer to the outside of bevel 1, sometimes called a semi-western backhand, and generated the racket-head speed that made his backhand one of the fastest ever recorded off a human wrist.

The mechanics are unusual because the arm is fully extended at contact. Everything below the shoulder is in one line, from the shoulder blade through the elbow through the wrist through the strings. The power comes not from the wrist snap or the forearm twist but from the shoulder turn and the hip rotation feeding a long, straight lever. Watch Wawrinka in slow motion and the contact position looks like a discus thrower at the moment of release. It is, essentially, the same movement.

What you get for it, when it works, is a shot with a longer strike zone than any two-hander can produce and a fluency of change-up that is almost impossible to defend. The one-hander goes to topspin, to flat drive, to slice, to drop shot, from the same take-back. What you give up is the return of serve on fast surfaces. Musetti has said it plainly: "Especially on the return side, there's many disadvantages, I would say, if you play one-handed backhand." The take-back is longer, the preparation is later, and against a 130mph first serve on grass or fast hard, the one-hander has to shorten the swing so much that the compensating grip strength has to be exceptional.

Which is why the modern one-hander looks the way it does. Wawrinka's is the reference. Patrick Mouratoglou ranks him as the greatest one-handed backhand of all time, above Federer. John McEnroe called it "the best one-handed backhand in the game" as far back as 2009. Asked how he built it, Wawrinka answered: "Practice, hours and hours of practice, balls and balls, bucket and everything that goes with it. Still today, I work on it a lot to be able to keep the level or even improve it." The shot exists because Wawrinka refused to let it go. Asked in April 2026 whether the one-hander was dying, he said: "The one-handed backhand will never die."

He is right in the way beautiful things never die and wrong in the way tour statistics never lie. It survives because of players like him. It just does not win the tour any more.

The two-handed backhand

The two-handed backhand is one shot with two hand positions on the handle. There is no single grip name for the whole thing. Coaches describe it by the two hands separately, because they sit on two different bevels at the same time, and the shot is what the two of them do together.

The dominant hand, the one at the base of the handle, sits in the continental grip on bevel 2. This is the same grip you use for a serve, a volley, an overhead and a slice. Nothing new to learn if you already have any of those shots. The non-dominant hand, the one stacked above it higher up the handle, sits on bevel 3. Coaches sometimes describe that top-hand position by its forehand equivalent (an eastern-forehand-style hold), but for the backhand what it does is provide the shape-and-guide surface that lets the racket face be controlled through contact.

That stacked pair, bottom hand on bevel 2, top hand on bevel 3, is the grip Djokovic, Sinner, Alcaraz, Nadal (as a lefty), Sabalenka, Świątek and roughly ninety per cent of the current top-100 tour hits from.

The reason it took over is not aesthetic. It is mechanical. The non-dominant hand, positioned like a left-handed forehand grip for a right-hander, essentially turns the backhand into a left-handed forehand with an assist arm. That single fact changes everything the shot can do.

The first thing it changes is disguise. A one-hander has to commit to topspin or slice from the take-back. The strong hand is doing the shot; the intent has to travel down the arm before the racket moves. On a two-hander, the shot can be redirected inside the last few inches of the swing because both hands are still shaping the contact. Djokovic redirecting a two-hander down the line at the last possible moment is the reference. Patrick Mouratoglou, who does not make casual claims, thinks Djokovic probably has the best backhand of all time.

The second thing it changes is the return of serve. On a two-hander, the take-back is shorter, the strike zone is compact, the racket-face angle at contact can be adjusted a hundredth of a second before the ball arrives. Goran Ivanišević, who coached Djokovic from 2019 to 2024 and won nine Grand Slams alongside him, was once asked what he would borrow from Novak's game if he were still playing. Ivanišević, a Wimbledon champion who used to serve at 140mph, did not hesitate: "His backhand, definitely."

The third thing it changes is the physics of topspin. Two hands on the racket produce roughly twice the wrist stability at contact of one, which is why the modern two-hander can hit heavier balls off higher contact points than any one-hander has ever done. The ball comes off the strings with more rotation, sits down on the opponent's side of the court less predictably, and pushes them further behind the baseline. This is why the two-hander is the default in the era of Luxilon polyester strings and 6'2 servers, and why the one-hander is not.

There is a story about Rafa Nadal that is worth telling here, because it explains something about how the two-hander became the default it now is. Rafa played his forehand and his backhand with two hands until he was about ten. Uncle Toni, watching him practise, delivered the coaching sentence that has since gone around the world: "There are no professional players who play with two hands and we're not going to be the first ones, so you've got to change." Rafa dropped the two-handed forehand and picked it up left-handed. He kept the two-handed backhand. The greatest lefty of the modern game hits his backhand as a lefty two-hander, which means the geometry of the shot is mirror-inverted from every righty on tour, and it still uses the same grip stack.

Jannik Sinner is the current-generation model. Darren Cahill, who coaches him, has spoken publicly about the mid-career technical work: "He accepted the challenge, he changed his serve, his backhand." Sinner willingly reworked his backhand slice as a change-up shot after Cahill asked him to, because a modern two-hander whose only backhand answer is the two-hander is a two-hander with one gear. Carlos Alcaraz's coach Juan Carlos Ferrero has said the same thing about his player: the two-hander is world class, but the slice off the backhand side is where the next level of the game lives. For the coaching parallels on the forehand side, the five-player pro forehand comparison covers the same voices talking about their players forehand.

The slice backhand

The slice is a different shot. Not a defensive shot, not a secondary shot, not an alternative to a primary backhand. A separate weapon that every serious player needs to own, and one that almost every serious player hits with the same grip regardless of which primary backhand they use: the continental, on bevel 2, the same grip a two-hander already uses for the bottom hand. The one-hander switches from the eastern-backhand grip on bevel 1 across to the continental on bevel 2 for the slice; the two-hander simply lets the top hand come off the handle and hits the slice with just the bottom hand, which is already in the continental position. Either way the racket face and the swing plane look and behave the same.

The mechanics are the same for a one-hander and a two-hander. The dominant hand takes the racket back high, the racket face opens to somewhere between forty-five and sixty degrees, the swing plane comes down from high to low with the shoulders staying square, and the ball is met in front of the body with an almost-flat brush that generates underspin. The knees bend, the weight transfers forward, and the follow-through is a controlled push out toward the target rather than a wrap around the body. A well-hit slice barely rotates on the way over the net; when it lands, the underspin skids the ball low and forward, forcing the opponent to lift it from below net height.

Patrick Mouratoglou ranks Roger Federer's slice as the greatest in the history of men's tennis. Stefan Edberg is second, Pat Rafter third. On the women's side, Jim Courier has said Ash Barty's slice is the best in the world, better than Federer's. The compliment is not accidental. Barty grew up in Queensland studying Federer's slice and rebuilt her own around it during her cricket sabbatical, then came back and won a Wimbledon that was substantially built on it.

The slice matters for two reasons that have nothing to do with defence. The first is doubles. Almost every high-percentage doubles return of serve is a slice, because a low, skidding return forces the incoming server to hit a half-volley off the shoelaces from inside their own baseline, and that half-volley is what the net player is waiting to poach. If you cannot slice a backhand return, you cannot play doubles at any serious level. The second is the change-up. A rally that has been six two-handers in a row followed by a floated slice is a rally where the opponent has to change the swing shape, the contact height and the timing of the next ball, all in the space of the bounce. The slice is the shot that resets a point on your terms.

The grip is a decision, not a default

The three backhands are three answers to three different questions on the court. The one-hander is a choice about touch and change-up at the cost of return-of-serve time. The two-hander is a choice about compact power and disguise at the cost of the last inch of reach. The slice is a choice about disruption, and it is not really a choice at all: every serious player needs it.

If you learned the two-hander as a child, you are hitting the right shot. Ninety-two per cent of the current ATP top 100 are with you. If you learned the one-hander and never wanted to give it up, you are in the company of Musetti and Dimitrov and Tsitsipas and the memory of Wawrinka and Federer, and you are hitting a shot that on the right day has won Grand Slams. If you own a slice off both sides, you are hitting a shot that Federer, Barty, Edberg and Rafter built entire tour careers on. And if you do not own a slice yet, that is the piece to add first, regardless of which primary backhand you already play.

A note for the reader who has read this far

If you are the sort of player who reads two thousand words on the tennis backhand grip, you are also the sort of player for whom All Court exists. You put your phone against the back fence, film a session, and upload it. You get a "talking head" session inside your own video from a touring professional. Plus the AI-enabled platform compares those ratings against thousands of shots from hundreds of players graded by the same touring pros and elite coaches. The output is a personalised coaching session on your footage and an All Court Rating for each shot you hit and a cumulative All Court Rating that compounds every time you film more of your play, so that you can see which parts of your game are improving and which want more work. There is no nominator, no joining fee, and no waitlist that closes inside a generation. Join the waitlist at allcourt.club/join.

Related reading

• The three forehand grips every serious player should know: eastern, semi-western, western

• Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Alcaraz, Sinner: five forehand grips, five different shots

• The eastern forehand grip: what it does, why the tour left it behind, and why it still wins matches

• The semi-western forehand grip: the modern default and why

• Doubles serve strategy: how to serve so your partner can win the point

• Tennis grip size chart: how to measure and why it matters