Roger Federer Analyzes the Vanishing One-Handed Backhand in Modern Tennis
Six of one. Zero in the last four. That's the arithmetic on the one-handed backhand as the 2026 major season enters its final Grand Slam at Flushing Meadows. Roger Federer, 45, returned to the U.S.
Open this week ahead of his International Tennis Hall of Fame induction and used a Monday news conference to diagnose the near-extinction of the stroke he made iconic. The five-time champion in New York pointed at a coaching-pipeline reversal as the primary cause, not a flaw in the shot itself.
The tactical autopsy
The shot's decline runs through development environments rather than competitive results. Federer noted that roughly 90 percent of his own coaches growing up were one-handed players — a direct transmission line from mentor to student. Today's tour-level coaches, he observed, overwhelmingly came up with two hands on the backhand side, and the two-handed model is simply more efficient to teach to a child. The result is a depth chart stripped to the bones.
The ATP top 100 lists six one-handers: Lorenzo Musetti, Denis Shapovalov, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Daniel Altmaier, Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, and Aleksandar Kovacevic. The WTA side is even thinner — Lilli Tagger, Diane Parry, Viktorija Golubic, and Tatjana Maria. No one-hander has reached a Grand Slam semifinal in 2026. If the U.S. Open draw closes without one, it will be the first major calendar year without a one-handed backhand in the last four since the inaugural Wimbledon in 1877.
Federer's own recalibration
The five-time New York champion spent the back half of his career solving the same problem himself. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic's two-handed baseline control blunted Federer's potency on both clay and hard courts, forcing a structural adjustment. In 2014, he moved from a 90-square-inch racket to a 97-square-inch frame, trading some maneuverability for stability on the backhand wing. After a six-month injury layoff in 2016, the tactical shift accelerated: Federer began taking the ball earlier on that side, cutting down reaction time for opponents.
The peak of that strategy was the Sneak Attack by Roger — creeping inside the baseline to return serves on the half-volley, shortening points and stripping time from return patterns. After his 2017 win over Nadal at Indian Wells, Federer credited the larger frame with letting him step into the backhand against the Spaniard.
The exhibition at Flushing Meadows
Federer steps onto Arthur Ashe Stadium on Tuesday for an exhibition with Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi, and John McEnroe — his first on-court appearance at the tournament since 2019. The Hall of Fame induction is the ceremonial bookend. On the competitive side, none of the six ATP one-handers enters the draw with a 2026 semifinal on their ledger.
A personal footnote rounds out the picture: one of Federer's 12-year-old twin sons is attempting to switch from two hands to one. Federer described the process as genuinely difficult, and pointed to a broader trend — modern player development has compressed timelines to the point where learning a one-handed backhand feels like a luxury. The same compression shows up in how young athletes manage fueling, recovery, and physical prep windows, areas where current nutrition research has tracked the shift closely.
The shot will likely survive as a niche weapon in the men's game and an even rarer specimen on the women's tour. Whether it returns to the last four of a major depends less on the stroke's ceiling than on whether any coach in the pipeline still believes the time investment is worth it.
