Last Sunday at the U.S. Open, the longest streak in Grand Slam tennis history ended. For the first time ever, going all the way back to 1877, a year will pass without a player with a single-handed backhand reaching a major semifinal.
Stefanos Tsitsipas was the last man or woman with the stroke standing in New York, but he was well beaten by Ben Shelton in the fourth round. Their match offered a neat summation of why, in Tsitsipas’ own words, players with single-handed backhands are “like dinosaurs going extinct.” The return of serve is where the shot is often most exposed in the modern game, and Tsitsipas didn’t force a single break point all match. Shelton exploited Tsitsipas’ single-hander mercilessly.
The usage of the shot — formerly the preferred choice of the vast majority of professionals, and one synonymous with stars like Roger Federer, Justine Henin and John McEnroe — has dwindled to such an extent that it has become tennis’ equivalent of an analog offering in a digital age.
“It’s such a traditional classic shot, that it’s such a shame to lose (it),” Tsitsipas, the world No. 53, said in a news conference after losing to Shelton, a day after posting on X: “I’ve got a 150-year streak to save.”
He believes the end is symptomatic of tennis’ increasing homogeneity.
“Tennis used to be played with so many different variations of style, and that variation of style has narrowed to one particular style these days where everyone is kind of playing the same,” he said.
“We used to have the serve-and-volley players, and those that played a specific different way, counter-punchers, defenders. Now it’s narrowed to one style. I think that’s what makes tennis so interesting and what used to make it so interesting is because you had those that played a specific way and others that played another way.
“It’s kind of the same with the one-handed backhand.”
Why does no one dominate the US Open?
Tifo Sports
In 2026, the vast majority of players use a double-handed backhand: 95 of the men’s top 100, and 96 of the top 100 women. Those who do play with a single-hander, like Tsitsipas, Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti or Austria’s Lilli Tagger inspire a kind of fascination as to why anyone would go down a path that has become so unusual and supposedly counterproductive.
Tagger, an 18-year-old from Austria, demonstrates its rarity in more ways than one. The last woman to win a major with a one-hander was Francesca Schiavone, at the 2010 French Open; she is now Tagger’s coach.
On the men’s side, Federer, Stan Wawrinka and Dominic Thiem have all won majors since, while Tsitsipas has reached two finals. Musetti cracked the world’s top five earlier this year, but has been hampered by injuries since.
Federer, whose single-handed backhand is part of the reason he is viewed as the epitome of tennis elegance, has become an unofficial spokesperson for the shot. In the wake of his retirement, the initial signs of decline had long been there. In 1991, eight of the ATP Tour top 10 used a one-handed backhand. In 2024, not long after Federer retired, the ATP saw its first top 10 composed entirely of two-handers.
Ahead of this year’s U.S. Open, Federer was asked in a news conference why he thought single-handed backhands had become so scarce. He cited the evolution of tennis toward a power-baseline game, in which the solidity of the double-hander is more valuable than the greater flair and feel of its single-handed sibling.
At the start of Federer’s career, the front of the court was prime real estate. Its value is very different now, with Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and more recently Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner stretching it wider and wider, and players thus retreating further and further to cover new angles.
“The double-hander just allows you, especially with the open stance, (to slide) — like what we’ve seen Rafa do and Novak do,” Federer said. “It’s amazing how you are able to defend out of that side.”
Andre Agassi, the eight-time Grand Slam champion, possessed one of the sport’s finest ever two-handers. When he started winning majors in the early 1990s, it made him as much of an outlier as the one-hander is 25 years later.
The one-handed backhand “has suffered under the pressure of the strings and heaviness of shots that can be hit,” Agassi said during a video interview in 2024.
This is particularly true on return of serve, the second-most important shot in the sport.
Tsitsipas, who is ranked No. 114 for the last year when it comes to return quality according to Courtside Advantage data, epitomizes a player who has not quite mastered the chip and slice returns that one-handers need to defang fast balls. Musetti is a master of the art.
On the women’s side, Diane Parry, at No. 31 the highest-ranked WTA player with a single-handed backhand, has experimented this year with switching to a double-hander when returning.
Even Federer made adaptations. Sick of being bullied by Nadal’s heavy forehand that would rear up to around shoulder height, especially on clay courts, he moved from a 90-square-inch racket to a 97-square-inch one in 2014. He used the additional power to play more aggressively on his backhand; he started focusing on taking the ball on the rise. The changes saw him beat Nadal in all four of their matches in 2017, having won only 11 of their first 34 meetings.
Federer was rare though in being able to play so aggressively with the single-hander. Wawrinka, helped by his phenomenal strength, is another exception. Most modern players with a single-hander are underpowered on that wing.
Roger Federer looms over the one-handed backhand lineage in men’s tennis. (Darren Carroll / USTA via Getty Images)
Some of this is fundamental. Dr. Jack Groppel, a former chairman of the National Sports Science Committee for the United States Tennis Association, analyzed the biomechanics of each shot for his dissertation in the late 1970s.
Groppel found, per the New York Times, that while the two-hander required coordination between the hips, legs, trunk and arms, the one-hander demanded coordination between the hips, legs, trunk, upper arm, forearm and hand.
The two-hander was much easier to master.
Studies like this, combined with the changes in the way tennis is played, contribute to a feedback loop. Tennis stars use it less. Tennis fans see it less. Tennis coaches who have players who want to become tennis stars coach it less. And so it is fading away.
Patrick Mouratoglou, currently working with Tsitsipas and the former coach of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, said during a video interview a couple of years ago that he wouldn’t encourage the kids at his academy to play with a single-hander.
Some of the dreamers who persist with a single-handed backhand insist that it can be a more effective shot — it just requires time and patience. Denis Shapovalov, the flashy Canadian ranked No. 48, told the U.S. Open website last month that: “When you do get to that stage (of mastering the shot) it is, I would say, a better shot, because I can create more with it today — creating angles with it that would be very tough with the two-handed backhand. But again, it just takes too long and people want things now, now, now these days.”
Tsitsipas meanwhile said in a 2024 interview that: “It has allowed me to develop better tennis. I don’t know if I would be such a good player if I played with a double-handed backhand.
“I feel like I’m able to open up the court easier, whereas the double-handed backhand is about playing more linear and more towards the center of the court with greater consistency. I feel like the single-handed backhand gives you that edge, that bigger unpredictability about not knowing what you’re going to get. But it comes with a bigger risk factor. If you don’t time it well, there isn’t much you can do to save it.”
Grigor Dimitrov, the man once nicknamed “Baby Fed” in part because of his picture-book single-handed backhand, compares cracking a good one to hitting the “jackpot.” He added, in a news conference at Wimbledon last year, that playing single-handed helps to hit a good slice. That shot, along with the ripped single-hander, helped him dominate eventual champion Sinner before he suffered a pectoral injury when up two sets to love.
Like Dimitrov, Musetti acknowledges that the shot’s beauty comes with a cost.
“I know that probably in the aesthetic part it’s probably a little more beautiful, but a lot of players don’t care about the aesthetic part and they like what they need to win,” he told the BNP Paribas Open website during the 2024 event.
He added to the ATP a year later: “I’m a fan of the one-handed backhand, but it doesn’t help you in the modern game, that’s the reality. It can complicate things for you.”
One place where the one-hander is persisting is at the recreational level, where players search for consistency and where elite levels of power and precision are secondary to fun, comfort and longevity.
Among those trying to make more of the sport, 18-year-old Tagger is fighting the good fight for the next generation. In a phone interview in May she said it always felt more natural to her, and feels as though she benefits from the greater range of angles she can create with it.
Lilli Tagger’s one-handed backhand is eye-catching, but the core of her game is her forehand and serve. (Anthony Behar / Sipa USA)
Thiem, her fellow Austrian and the last player with a single-hander to win a Slam, possessed a phenomenal backhand. He said in a 2024 interview that the bigger swing and potential to put more topspin on the ball were two of the shot’s advantages. Thiem was unusual in being able to hit the single-hander with an open stance, with his feet parallel to the net, which is an advantage generally held by those playing with the double-hander.
Players like Alcaraz, Sinner and Djokovic have mastered the art of using their open-stance backhand to stretch into and out of the corners. Martina Navratilova, whose improved single-hander helped her dominate the sport in the 1980s, said if she was playing now she’d probably play with both hands.
“The one-hander is more difficult to master,” she said in a phone interview last year. “On the men’s side, I think I would prefer to have a two-hander if I was playing now because it’s just easier to get out of the corners.”
Were it not for Federer, the single-hander might have been even rarer than it is today. It was the desire to emulate him that led to Shapovalov and Tsitsipas playing with one.
The same is true of many others, including Chris Eubanks, the former world No. 29 and now analyst, who explained in an interview in May that he begged his dad to let him switch to a one-hander when he was 13 so he could be more like the great Federer.
“For sure, if I could do it all over again, I would have had a two-hander,” he said, adding that part of the reason he retired at 29 last year was because he felt the game had passed him by.
“I think it’s going to become obsolete, especially in the men’s game. I just think returning is so difficult,” he said.
“No one really wants to be handling balls above the shoulders time after time after time. We look at Jannik and we look at Carlos: So often, they’ll have a little bit of a jumping backhand on their return if it gets shoulder level. That’s simply to be able to manage the height of it. As a one-hander you don’t really do that.”
At the Dallas Open in February, Shapovalov conceded that as much as he loves the single-hander, he fears the sport is moving in a different direction. “In today’s game it’s very much heading towards the way of having a solid two-handed backhand and generating with the forehand,” Shapovalov said in a mixed zone.
“The game is so quick today, it helps to have that extra arm on the backhand. That’s why it’s so much more rare to see guys that have one-handed backhands.” He joked that he blamed Federer for the fact he played with one.
Parry, meanwhile, looked up to Henin (herself inspired by Steffi Graf and Stefan Edberg) and Amélie Mauresmo, two former world No. 1s and multiple Grand Slam winners who played with a single-handed backhand.
But the careers of those champions and potential role models are becoming increasingly distant memories. Another of them, Wawrinka, will retire this year — even if he sounded more positive about the shot’s future during a video interview in 2025. “It’s always going to be there,” he said, though there are few youngsters, Tagger aside, coming through with a single-hander.
Still, Federer isn’t ready to accept that the breaking of a 149-year streak will foreshadow the death of one of tennis’ most beloved shots.
“I’m still hopeful it’s not the end,” he said.