Two-Handed Tennis

Two-handed Tennis

There I was on the court, as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I noticed that the guy on the next court was playing two-handed, as I do. It turned out that the guy I was playing with, Robert, knew the guy and introduced me. We belonged to a rare breed, on the brink of extinction and never populous—the two-handers. I started playing with two hands only a couple of years ago because of an injury; he, Matthew, had been doing it since he was a kid. He said it just came naturally to him; he had tried with one hand but just didn’t like it. I sat and watched him play. He was clearly an excellent player, forehand and backhand. The forehand was solid as a rock and highly effective. We then had a talk about why more people don’t used that technique, expressing bafflement. It’s easier for kids for whom a single arm is often not strong enough; you get a lot of control; almost everyone accepts that a two-handed backhand is preferable. I myself don’t think it should be a binary choice; here I seem to be in a minority of one. Why not play both ways depending on the situation? I can play one-handed and two-handed on both sides—it’s not that hard. But no one ever does. No one. Professional or amateur. You get the best of both worlds and it startles the opponent. I intend to play with Matthew one day and do a scientific study of his stroke, comparing notes. Maybe we can spread the gospel of two hands.

Monica Seles used to play with both hands, and then there is the great Fabrice Santoro of France, now retired (aged 53). I revisited some old videos of him on YouTube (I did see him play once in Miami about eighteen years ago). They called him The Magician. He seems almost superhuman technically, with an enormous variety of shots, some of them trick shots. He had a long successful career, though never reached the top ten. I don’t think anyone supposes that he would have done better if he had played one-handed; indeed, he would have done worse. I feel like I play better two-handed than I used to one-handed, though I did the latter for many more years (and had a healthy right arm then). Two-handed players like playing two-handed; they don’t do it for the novelty effect or because they can’t swing a racket with one hand. I do both depending on how I want to hit the ball and its distance from my body. This raises an obvious question: why don’t more players adopt the two-handed lifestyle? Why are there so few of us? No one ever claims that it has been scientifically proven that one hand is better than two—and the two-handed backhand is clearly the dominant stroke these days. Why don’t people, players and coaches, at least give it a try? Maybe it’s not for everyone, but surely many more players would prefer it if given the chance. I find it makes the game more fun, and I win more points that way.