One disadvantage of some one-handed backhands is that they tend to sit up a little more when they’re hit crosscourt. That gives an opponent more time to prepare and, often, enough time to run around a crosscourt shot and hit a forehand, which opens up more tactical possibilities.
With the 700 men’s matches in the Match Charting Project database (please contribute!), we can start to quantify this disadvantage–if indeed it has a negative effect on one-handers. Once we’ve determined whether one-handers can find their opponents’ backhands, we can try to answer the more important question of how much it matters.
The scenario
Let’s take all baseline rallies between right-handers. Your opponent hits a shot to your backhand side, and you have three choices: drive (flat or topspin) backhand, slice backhand, or run around to hit a forehand. You’ll occasionally go for a winner down the line and you’ll sometimes be forced to hit a weak reply down the middle, but usually, your goal is to return the shot crosscourt, ideally finding your opponent’s backhand.
Considering all righty-righty matchups including at least one player among the last week’s ATP top 72 (I wanted to include Nicolas Almagro), here are the frequency and results of each of those choices:
SHOT FREQ FH REP BH REP UFE WINNER PT WON
ALL 9.9% 68.1% 10.8% 5.8% 43.1%
SLICE 11.9% 34.1% 49.5% 7.1% 0.6% 40.2%
FH 44.9% 2.8% 69.0% 13.0% 9.8% 42.1%
BH 43.3% 10.7% 72.2% 9.5% 3.1% 45.0%
1HBH 42.6% 12.0% 69.5% 9.3% 3.8% 44.2%
2HBH 43.5% 10.0% 73.4% 9.6% 2.8% 45.4%
“FH REP” and “BH REP” refer to a forehand or backhand reply, and we can see just how much shot selection matters in keeping the ball away from your opponent’s forehand. A slice does a very poor job, while an inside-out forehand almost guarantees a backhand reply, though it comes with an increased risk of error.
The differences between one- and two-handed backhands aren’t as stark. One-handers don’t find the backhand quite as frequently, though they hit a few more winners. They hit drive backhands a bit less often, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are hitting forehands instead. On average, two-handers hit a few more forehands from the backhand corner, while one-handers are forced to hit more slices.
One hand, many types
Not all one-handed backhands are created equal, and these numbers bear that out. Stanislas Wawrinka‘s backhand is as effective as the best two-handers, while Roger Federer‘s is typically the jumping-off point for discussions of why the one-hander is dying.
Here are the 28 players for whom we have at least 500 instances (excluding service returns) when the player responded to a shot hit to his backhand corner. For each, I’ve shown how often he chose a drive backhand or forehand, and the frequency with which he found the backhand–excluding his own errors and winners.
Player BH BH FRQ FIND BH% FH FRQ FIND BH%
Alexandr Dolgopolov 2 45.7% 94.2% 43.3% 98.7%
Kei Nishikori 2 51.1% 94.0% 38.9% 98.1%
Andy Murray 2 41.0% 92.4% 46.5% 98.6%
Stanislas Wawrinka 1 48.6% 92.1% 37.5% 98.0%
Bernard Tomic 2 33.8% 91.7% 43.8% 97.9%
Novak Djokovic 2 47.2% 91.7% 41.4% 98.5%
Kevin Anderson 2 41.0% 91.5% 45.8% 96.6%
Borna Coric 2 46.5% 90.7% 44.2% 96.9%
Pablo Cuevas 1 41.9% 90.6% 54.5% 96.5%
Marin Cilic 2 45.4% 89.7% 43.3% 97.2%
Player BH BH FRQ FIND BH% FH FRQ FIND BH%
Tomas Berdych 2 41.6% 89.3% 44.2% 97.5%
Pablo Carreno Busta 2 55.4% 87.8% 41.1% 93.5%
Fabio Fognini 2 46.0% 87.4% 47.0% 96.1%
Richard Gasquet 1 57.2% 87.3% 32.1% 96.8%
Andreas Seppi 2 40.3% 87.2% 50.0% 93.9%
Nicolas Almagro 1 53.6% 86.5% 39.3% 98.0%
Dominic Thiem 1 38.5% 86.2% 50.0% 96.5%
Gael Monfils 2 48.0% 85.3% 46.3% 85.3%
David Ferrer 2 48.2% 84.9% 40.4% 97.1%
Roger Federer 1 42.7% 84.8% 43.6% 94.5%
Player BH BH FRQ FIND BH% FH FRQ FIND BH%
Gilles Simon 2 46.9% 84.6% 46.5% 94.6%
David Goffin 2 45.4% 84.6% 45.7% 94.9%
Roberto Bautista Agut 2 39.6% 83.3% 46.7% 98.4%
Jo Wilfried Tsonga 2 43.5% 82.0% 44.5% 96.3%
Grigor Dimitrov 1 41.4% 78.6% 39.4% 92.8%
Milos Raonic 2 31.5% 63.5% 56.5% 94.3%
Jack Sock 2 27.0% 62.5% 62.9% 96.3%
Tommy Robredo 1 26.6% 56.1% 62.3% 88.4%
One-handers Wawrinka, Pablo Cuevas, and Richard Gasquet (barely) are among the top half of these players, in terms of finding the backhand with their own backhand. Federer and his would-be clone Grigor Dimitrov are at the other end of the spectrum.
Taking all 60 righties I included in this analysis (not just those shown above), there is a mild negative correlation (r^2 = -0.16) between a player’s likelihood of finding the opponent’s backhand with his own and the rate at which he chooses to hit a forehand from that corner. In other words, the worse he is at finding the backhand, the more inside-out forehands he hits. Tommy Robredo and Jack Sock are the one- and two-handed poster boys for this, struggling more than any other players to find the backhand, and compensating by hitting as many forehands as possible.
However, Federer–and, to an even greater extent, Dimitrov–don’t fit this mold. The average one-hander runs around balls in their backhand corner 44.6% of the time, while Fed is one percentage point under that and Dimitrov is below 40%. Federer is perceived to be particularly aggressive with his inside-out (and inside-in) forehands, but that may be because he chooses his moments wisely.
Ultimate outcomes
Let’s look at this from one more angle. In the end, what matters is whether you win the point, no matter how you get there. For each of the 28 players listed above, I calculated the rate at which they won points for each shot selection. For instance, when Novak Djokovic hits a drive backhand from his backhand corner, he wins the point 45.4% of the time, compared to 42.3% when he hits a slice and 42.4% when he hits a forehand.
Against his own average, Djokovic is about 3.6% better when he chooses (or to think of it another way, is able to choose) a drive backhand. For all of these players, here’s how each of the three shot choices compare to their average outcome:
Player BH BH W SL W FH W
Dominic Thiem 1 1.209 0.633 0.924
David Goffin 2 1.111 0.656 0.956
Grigor Dimitrov 1 1.104 0.730 1.022
Gilles Simon 2 1.097 0.922 0.913
Tomas Berdych 2 1.085 0.884 0.957
Pablo Carreno Busta 2 1.081 0.982 0.892
Kei Nishikori 2 1.070 0.777 0.965
Roberto Bautista Agut 2 1.055 0.747 1.027
Stanislas Wawrinka 1 1.050 0.995 0.936
Borna Coric 2 1.049 1.033 0.941
Player BH BH W SL W FH W
Bernard Tomic 2 1.049 1.037 0.943
Jack Sock 2 1.049 0.811 1.010
Gael Monfils 2 1.048 1.100 0.938
Fabio Fognini 2 1.048 0.775 0.987
Milos Raonic 2 1.048 0.996 0.974
Nicolas Almagro 1 1.046 0.848 0.964
Kevin Anderson 2 1.038 1.056 0.950
Novak Djokovic 2 1.036 0.966 0.969
Andy Murray 2 1.031 1.039 0.962
Roger Federer 1 1.023 1.005 0.976
Player BH BH W SL W FH W
Richard Gasquet 1 1.020 0.795 1.033
Andreas Seppi 2 1.019 0.883 1.008
David Ferrer 2 1.018 0.853 1.020
Alexandr Dolgopolov 2 1.010 1.010 0.987
Marin Cilic 2 1.006 1.009 0.991
Pablo Cuevas 1 0.987 0.425 1.048
Jo Wilfried Tsonga 2 0.956 0.805 1.095
Tommy Robredo 1 0.845 0.930 1.079
In this view, Dimitrov–along with his fellow one-handed flame carrier Dominic Thiem–looks a lot better. His crosscourt backhand doesn’t find many backhands, but it is by far his most effective shot from his own backhand corner. We would expect him to win more points with a drive backhand than with a slice (since he probably opts for slices in more defensive positions), but it’s surprising to me that his backhand is so much better than the inside-out forehand.
While Dimitrov and Thiem are more extreme than most, almost all of these players have better results with crosscourt drive backhands than with inside-out (or inside-in forehands). Only five–including Robredo but, shockingly, not including Sock–win more points after hitting forehands from the backhand corner.
It’s clear that one-handers do, in fact, have a slightly more difficult time forcing their opponents to hit backhands. It’s much less clear how much it matters. Even Federer, with his famously dodgy backhand and even more famously dominant inside-out forehand, is slightly better off hitting a backhand from his backhand corner. We’ll never know what would happen if Fed had Djokovic’s backhand instead, but even though Federer’s one-hander isn’t finding as many backhands as Novak’s two-hander does, it’s getting the job done at a surprisingly high rate.
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