One Hand or Two?

Are you a fan of the single hander or the double hander? Does Roger and Stan’s elegantly struck single hander sway you or Andy and Novak’s pulsating 2 hander get your vote.

We all know that both strokes have advantages as well as disadvantages but why is the 2 hander so dominant in today’s game?

Is it power as well as a players comfort zone contact point has been demanded to be higher so therefore easier to hit with 2 hands??
Another interesting thought to throw in is are the players who are using 2 hands on the backhand as effective at slicing as the single handers??

The current Top 10 in the Men’s game sees double handers outweigh the single handers by 7:3 but back in the early 90s the single hander was more dominant with 8 out of the top 10 favouring it.

If we were to delve a long way back in history then we all know that 2 handers didn’t really exist (and didn’t need to) as this was mainly down to a “flatter” hitting game. A more accurate way of describing topspin would have been that the player might play a “rolled” backhand but more often than not the slice or flatter hit would come out.

By the early 80s topspin was being used more and players were then able to get the ball up higher especially to their opponents backhands, this clearly made it increasingly more difficult to play with one hand but as we know topspin has been around for quite a while before this swing happened so why has this swayed so dramatically from one hand to two hands over the last 20 years or so..?

Was it the emergence of “Ice cool” Borg that introduced the 2 hander to the world stage which then led to the flamboyancy of Agassi’s early ball strike that helped swing the younger generation to think that this was a “cool” way to play?

If Federer, Wawrinka and Gasquet can quite easily survive in the modern power game with their single handers does this just suggest that it’s a cycle we are in and in another 20 years we could have the single handers outweighing the double handers again? Something tells me not, wherever I go the 2 hander is visible with the single hander becoming more and more a dying breed.

According to the next generation of stars the current Junior World Rankings suggests nothing seems to be changing much with 8 of the top 10 players sticking with the 2 hander.