Backhand
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The backhand in tennis is a stroke hit by swinging the racquet away from one's body in the direction of where the player wants the ball to go. For a right-handed player, a backhand begins on the left side of his body, continues across his body as contact is made with the ball, and ends on the right side of his body. It can be either a one-handed or a two-handed stroke.
The backhand is generally considered more difficult to master than the forehand. Because the dominant hand "pulls" into the shot, instead of pushing, the backhand generally lacks the power and consistency of a forehand. Beginner and club-level players often have difficulty hitting a backhand and junior players often have trouble because they are not strong enough to hit it. Even many advanced players have a better forehand than backhand, and there are many strategies based on exploiting this weakness.
[edit] Grips
- Main article: Grip (tennis)
For most of the 20th Century the backhand was hit with one hand, using either an eastern or a continental grip. The first notable players to use two hands were the 1930s Australians Vivian McGrath and John Bromwich. Beginning with Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert in the 1970s, many players began to use a two-handed grip for the backhand. Pete Sampras notably switched from the two-handed to the one-handed backhand late in his development. The question of which grip is better is still up for debate.
A one-handed backhand offers longer reach and more variety because they can be hit with topspin or underspin. One-handed backhands also allow for better disguise due to the same shoulder-turn technique prior to striking the ball, so an opponent would not necessarily be able to assess a topspin backhand or a slice backhand coming until the player actually makes contact with the ball. On the same note, due to the disguise of a one-handed backhand setup, a skilled player would also have a possibility of playing the dropshot with better success than a two-handed player. A two-handed player's slice, in contrast, is much more apparent, and can often be read ahead of time by skilled players. However, players like Martina Hingis and Andre Agassi have developed tricky disguises to their two-handed backhand setups prior to producing dropshots or slices, and it is essentially determined by how comfortable the player is and how much success the shot brings in terms of its disguise. With some exceptions, one-handed backhand players move to the net with greater ease than two-handed players because the shot permits greater forward momentum and has greater similarities in muscle memory when hitting backhand volleys and backhand groundstrokes. However, one-handed backhand players are prone to slicing or chipping returns when shots bounce too high over their strike zones; and skilled opponents often play into that weakness.
The two-handed backhand tends to be more stable and powerful. Two-handed backhanded players are much more steady from the baseline and are often associated with heavy aggressive baseline play. Two-handed backhands do not offer quite the same reach that one-handed backhands offer, so two-handed players have to be sharper in their movement when going after hard to reach backhands. A two-handed player has an easier time adjusting to shots which fall outside his/her strike zone, unlike a one-handed player, who would opt for a slice return. Two-handed players are prone to becoming too reliant on drawing power from their arms only; and by doing so, may become a victim of improper technique. Some players who rely too much on the arms and does not utilize their body rotation or knee bend have a higher risk of becoming injured. While it isn't necessarily bad, it is quite commonplace to see two-handed players hitting with an open stance or using all arm to produce strong and effective backhands.
It is not easy for a player to alternate hitting one-handed and two-handed backhands, because it requires different muscle memory. A small number of players, notably Monica Seles, use two hands on both the backhand and forehand sides.
[edit] Great backhands
The player long considered to have had the best backhand of all time, amateur and professional champion Don Budge, had a very powerful one-handed stroke in the 1930s and '40s that imparted topspin onto the ball. He used an Eastern grip, and some pictures show his thumb extended along the side of the racquet for greater support. Ken Rosewall, another amateur and professional champion noted for his one-handed backhand, also used an Eastern grip to hit a deadly accurate slice backhand with underspin throughout the 1950s and '60s.
In his 1979 autobiography Jack Kramer devotes a page to the best tennis strokes he had ever seen. He writes: "BACKHAND—Budge was best, with Kovacs, Rosewall and Connors in the next rank (although, as I've said, Connors' 'backhand' is really a two-handed forehand). Just in passing, the strangest competitive stroke was the backhand that belonged to Budge Patty. It was a weak shot, a little chip. But suddenly on match point, Patty had a fine, firm backhand. He was a helluva match player."
Other professional players noted for their exceptional backhand:
