It's on its way to extinction in tennis. In other racket/paddle sports, notably pickleball, it's very much alive and well. If you add up the numbers for all such sports, there might be as many one-handed backhanders as ever. Competitive tennis is becoming more about strength and height (the article even alludes to the former) than anything else. This is rarely good for any sport, and is likely why interest in alternatives is growing.
This is a strange comment. The article is specifically about professional tennis. Does professional pickleball even exist, and is there any public interest in it? The US Open is currently all over TV and the news; what about pickleball tournaments?
Of course there's plenty of interest in amateur pickleball, but there's no evidence that amateur tennis is becoming more about strength and height.
If I had a choice between watching tennis and watching pickleball, I'd choose tennis.
Not only is tennis far more athletic - almost like fencing with a ball - it sounds and looks so much better. In tennis, the audible whack at the point of contact with the ball is so satisfying. Pickleball sounds, by contrast, are squeaky and annoying.
Pickleball is more accessible to new and older players, though. And that counts for something.
Venus Williams is in her 40's, after a long career as a tennis pro. I assure you that if she could still play high-level tennis, she would, but she is well past retirement age (and the associated physical condition) in that sport. Pickleball is the sport she can still play.
1. change: "high-level" -> "the highest professional levels". I'd wager Venus could play well easily until her 60s if not longer. There are many levels in tennis. There is are a range of competitive club levels. How often and how intensely she plays is another question.
2. Change: "the" -> "one" (w.r.t. "Pickleball is the sport she can still play.)
Stepping back, in my view, some of the most interesting questions are psychological and personal. If you were to talk to a hundred former tennis pros about aging, what would they say? How much do they play? How does it feel? How do they shift their mindset as their bodies age? To what degree is tennis still fun for them?
Venus Williams just crashed out of the first round of the U.S. Open, but she was ranked 407 in the world prior to that. She’s plagued by injuries, beset by problems from the autoimmune disorder Sjögrens Syndrome and a shadow of what she once was, but she’s still playing “high-level tennis”.
It has had a ton of money thrown into it to make it a thing, due to the sheer size of the addressable market in the US and the disposable income that's up for grabs (due to being primarily played by older / less mobile people). Jack Sock is a good example of this.
I'm not sure if it's due to the size of the TAM, but there are a lot of pickleball players with a lot of money, and some of them are investing that money into making their hobby into a bigger sport. This sort of dynamic is keeping competitive bridge alive right now.
If I have to google to discover whether professional pickleball exists, then it's not anywhere near the popularity of other professional sports. I would have heard about the results of pickleball matches in the sports headlines.
> Your reply is just a low-effort attempt to dismiss an idea that makes you uncomfortable, or maybe just to pour derision on something for fun. Show more curiosity.
Please refrain from personal attacks, which are against the HN guidelines.
I don't even understand what you think is supposed to be making me "uncomfortable". I'm perfectly comfortable, thanks.
I was simply disputing this:
> This is rarely good for any sport, and is likely why interest in alternatives is growing.
1) Basically every professional sports is becoming more about strength and height over time, because athletes are getting better over time. Even professional golf, for example, is becoming much more athletic.
2) I don't think there's any evidence or plausibility to the idea that changes in professional tennis explain why pickleball has become popular among amateurs. I'm not disputing the amateur popularity of pickleball. And any growing popularity there may be in professional pickleball is the result rather than the cause of the amateur popularity of pickleball.
Is this a backhanded remark? (pun intended) In conversation, generalization and cross-comparisons happen. Our brains do these things, and it makes for interesting discussion.
> ... but there's no evidence that amateur tennis is becoming more about strength and height.
There's an implied quantitative model in this comment, but what is being claimed is rather unclear. Until that model gets specified, we could talk in circles about it.
Most would expect that strength matters, but how much? / And how much for what? For winning? For being competitive enough for it to be satisfying and fun? For overall participation levels? / I don't assume a linear effect across age, ability, nor skill. / And how much relative to other qualities? And how much are the factors intertwined?
The comment I responded to claims there is no evidence, without offering support for itself. My goal here is to offer constructive criticism and invite the commenter to clarify.
Here on HN, like most forums, there is a write vs. read imbalance: "write once, read many". If you take a broad view, the implications are clear: it is better when writers put in the effort to be clear, particularly when asked.
There is a common conversational pattern:
(a) One person makes a comment which is somewhat vague.
(b) The next person reads, and despite the ambiguity, responds without asking clarification questions.
(c) Repeat.
Is it a surprise that such conversations have so many failure modes? Some include: (1) talking past each other; (2) not really learning; (3) not getting to know each other; (4) missing an opportunity to connect and build bridges.
I attempted to break the pattern by pointing out the ambiguity and asking clarification questions. This is the norm for sites like Stack Overflow, for good reason.
I have a hypothesis: the above dysfunctional pattern is not widely recognized here on HN. It isn't part of people's awareness; we fall into counterproductive conversational styles without recognizing it.
Sure, there are styles of debate where people try to score points. That's a zero-sum mentality; a waste of our collective effort.
I encourage us to reflect on this question: Given how much time people spend on HN, how many durable personal connections are formed?
Wow, you are vastly, vastly overthinking this. My point was simply that amateur tennis is played by ordinary people—of all ages, shapes, sizes, and experience levels—in large part for fun, exercise, and recreation, so there's no reason to think that amateur tennis is somehow becoming more about strength and height. Ordinary people aren't changing, and thus amateur tennis isn't changing.
This is your opinion. It also comes across as judgmental. Remember: people think differently and to different depths.
I suspected you had more to say. There is no plausible way one could read your mind and go from what you wrote before to what you wrote here.
I'm here to learn and discuss. It doesn't help when people have a dismissive tone in response to questions.
FWIW, I enjoyed many of your comments in this thread. But this one wasn't persuasive to me. If you are curious why, I can explain, but at present, based on your above response, I'm reluctant.
> Competitive tennis is becoming more about strength and height
Is that really the case? At present, the world's #1 and #2 men's players are 6'1" and 6'2" respectively. And both well under 200 pounds. These are not giant musclemen by anybody's reckoning. Nadal and Federer were also both 6'1" and quite slim.
It seems to me that tennis is about agility, coordination, and reaction time -- and that great height and remarkable muscle bulk are somewhat disfavored.
The two-handed backhand is apparently a shorter and biomechanically more efficient movement than its single-handed equivalent, is all. And at the top levels of sport, with so much on the line, every small advantage counts.
I think you're right that other aspects of the sport impose upper limits of efficient sizes, but I don't think the article (or the original poster) was using 'giant musclemen' as benchmark for strength and height.
Before I get too deep - I don't follow tennis. I'm just a sport nerd. I went and grabbed the 2007 and 2023 ATP men's ranking (cause that's whats on ESPN.com) and grabbed the heights of the top 10. Average height in 2007 was 71.8 inches (1.82m) and average height in 2023 was 74.5 inches (1.89m).
Djokovic (who is in top 3 in both lists... absolutely amazing) went from being tied for tallest in the top 10, to being tied for 4th tallest.
Tennis, like fencing, is getting taller at the pro level. However, the athletes in both games are a lot more about agility than bulk. Above 2 meters in height, there aren't a lot of people (and many of the athletic ones end up playing for the NBA), so I would assume that there is room for "normal-sized" people in tennis for a while.
Height has risen over time, although the rise is far more pronounced for women than for men.
Perhaps most interesting though is the apparent decrease in height variance from the 1990s onwards. Before that, you had a mix of relatively tall and relatively short champions. But from 1990 onwards, which would seem to coincide with the decline of wooden rackets and the rise of the modern power game, you stopped seeing any champions below 180cm.
It's also worth considering that, even if height confers a significant advantage, its impact is limited by the normal distribution of height in the overall population. Assuming that A) you still need to have exceptional tennis playing ability to become a champion and B) exceptional tennis playing ability is very rare and not correlated with height, then you would expect rather more exceptional players of average height than exceptional players of significantly above average height.
So even if height provided an advantage with no meaningful upper limit, you still might not expect champions of 7'0" because there are just no players with such an unlikely combination of extreme height and extreme ability. You might instead expect a statistical sweet spot where the populations of players with both attributes is large enough that the overlap is where most champions sit.
Not sure why you were downvoted. Fitness, equipment (racket and strings) are the reason if not the height. For height, above a certain level, say 6 ft 2 inch, it starts becoming a liability in movement. Tennis used to have a lot of variety in the past. Big serve and volleyers on grass, long baseline rallies on clay, slice backhands, flat strokes. Now it's monotonous.. the surface doesn't matter. The game with the most payoff is to stand back at the baseline and hammer the ball.
On a somewhat related topic, fitness has taken over many sports. In field hockey, dribbling used to be a skill. India was unbeaten for decades in Olympics, winning 8-9 gold medals. The introduction of artificial turf ushered in the era of strength and fitness, and the Western nations mostly took over.
Almost nothing in tennis has to do with strength, quite the opposite. I can see definitely see more tall players become better with movement, ground strokes, and volleys(Medvedev, Zverev). Tall players still get injured a ton, but science is improving in the recovery department.
Stan the Man Wawrinka is one of the most talented players in (relatively) recent tennis history, at his best he had moments of magic that were only approached by Federer. Glad that he got to win a few Grand Slams.
Also, too bad that Dimitrov didn't peak higher, but he gave it a go, so there's that.
Wawrinka's single handed is arguably better than many double handers out there. It's combination of power and spin is unmatched. He can play the whole range of shots, gets incredible accuracy and appears to be repeatable enough to exchange rallies against the best forehand all day. Which makes me wonder why no one has been able to replicate it. Either he's a freak blessed with unique mechanics to be able to perform this shot or there's not enough people trying.
Dimitrov has had an incredible career too. They hyped him, "Baby Fed" - and maybe he didn't live up to that (one of the greatest ever), but Grigor has been as high as 3 in the world and has been in the top 30 for over a decade. Every time he's dipped he's come back in better shape and got better results. He's won a Masters 1000 and while its not a grand slam, still an incredible achievement in the big 3 era.
I got love for G, but you are right, I wish he peaked higher too. I always thought when he saw Thiem win the US Open he got motivated to try and get one himself. But now Alcaraz and a bunch of others that are just too strong. Definitely think he missed his window.
> [...] experts say, is mostly a function of the increasing role of power and velocity in the sport. Even clay courts, historically the slowest surface, play hard and fast these days. Players, who spend more and more time in the gym, keep getting bigger and stronger, and now hit forehands at more than 100 miles per hour. Rackets and strings allow for so much topspin that rally balls from even average players are bouncing up to eye level, making it hard for even the 6-foot-7 Eubanks to get on top of the ball on some backhands.
David Nainkin, who leads player development for men for the United States Tennis Association, has advice for any young talent he sees wielding a one-handed backhand — get rid of it. The two-handed backhand is far more stable, he said, and the motion is shorter and simpler.
“It’s almost impossible to make it with a one-handed backhand now,” he said. “I think you’ll see less of it maybe in the next 10 years.”
So the parent comment was referencing the steroid era in the 90s like the sibling comment mentions but you also do still see that in the (presumably) cleaner game today. While upper 90s fastballs used to be rare, they're pretty common now. More and more pitchers are throwing pitches with more and more spin. Personally, I think the game is in a good place especially with the pace of play changes but many (most?) also believe that this arms race, so to speak, is really driving the prevalence of arm injuries. I'm a Rays fan, it's a sore subject this year.
While there is no clear evidence that gameplay was significantly changed due to Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), the analytics revolution headlined by Moneyball has continued to change the game towards power. Both hitting (hitting fly balls far as the core strategy, accepting increased strikeouts which used to be "embarassing") and pitching ("pitch labs", where the average velocity has significantly increased with harder to hit pitches) were impacted.
Basically, the benefit of a homerun and the benefit of a strikeout were both better understood and so the balance of the game changed so those were more common outcomes.
Can anyone explain why topspin makes a ball bounce lower (matching my experience and some online reports) and also higher (matching some reports in this thread and online)?
All else being equal, both can't be right. So is there some other variable at play, such as velocity, surface coefficient of friction, etc? Or is someone wrong?
> No, that link has that statement as a true/false quiz question, and gives the answer as false.
Oh, well, that site seems pretty sketchy anyway. It wants to force download multiple files as soon as I load it.
FWIW here's Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topspin#Competitive_utility "On most court surfaces, topspin also makes the ball bounce higher. As a result, it is often used on clay or "soft" court surfaces which have a naturally higher bounce in order to make the ball harder for the opponent to hit. An opponent with a one-handed backhand is especially vulnerable to a topspin shot because it is difficult to hit a high ball with a one-handed backhand."
[EDIT:] Reading that sketchy site more closely, it appears to be a trick question:
> So, if you've been paying attention, you might say, "The question at the beginning of this article was a ruse?" Not exactly. In theory, it is possible to hit two balls, one with topspin and one with slice, that arrive with the same height. But in reality, that won’t happen. You have to hit a slice low over the net, otherwise it will fly long. On the other hand, you want to hit a topspin-ball high over the net; otherwise it will land short or in the net.
What makes all the difference in tennis is that topspin and backspin shots go over the net at entirely different angles. You're not just hitting a flat shot with spin.
it "bounces lower" in that a ball coming down will dive down faster and lower.
But after it hits the ground, it will "bounce higher". The misunderstanding probably comes from using the word "bounce" without specifying whether the ball is bouncing up or down.
This is the forward topspin of the ball working to move the ball harder in the direction it's going (I. e. faster down before bouncing, and faster up after bouncing)
> experts say, is mostly a function of the increasing role of power and velocity in the sport. Even clay courts, historically the slowest surface, play hard and fast these days.
Yeah this line was the key for me. But I think it is the opposite. They don't play hard and fast, they play hard and slow. This is why, I think, we do not have a lot of serve and volley players nowadays or one-handed backhands, not like the 90s. Because the baseliner has enough time to return your serves.
I watched the Wimbledon final and although Alcaraz went to the nets, it did not feel it is his style like a McEnroe or a Sampras. It felt like it was a strategy against Djokovic. Barely managed to hold on though.
Anyways, I stopped watching tennis a while ago (except the wimbledon finals), there is too much power and bullying involved, not enough grace and beauty. It feels like, I dare say, when field hockey decided to use astroturf instead of grass. In one stroke, all the flair players that relied on the unpredictability of grass were out and "hard running" and "precision scientific passing" won the day. Field Hockey stadiums are now almost always half-full, the beauty is gone.
Football and Rugby, I hope they stay the same.
EDIT: One other thing I noticed is that, in the 90s and early 00s, you had clay court specialists, hard court specialist and grass court specialists. The 4 grand slams were called the Vivaldi 4 seasons, they were that different. Winning all 4 was exceedingly tough. I think, now they are all the same, hard and slow. The variablility and unpredicatability is gone. You win 1, you can win them all.
It seems like perfectly reasonable succinct shorthand for "a technique that isn't taught and rarely used any longer." People really need to stop calling anything that isn't a detailed abstract "clickbait."
Not the publication but giving a bit more context: Since the learning of 1/2HB is established most of the time during the player development, the issue is if someone does not learn and stick with a particular way of backhand it's quite unlikely or almost impossible to switch when you're a high performance athlete.
Let's say that this is not a "stroke" (for the lack of a better comparison) ask a player to switch from 1HB to 2HB it's more or less hard (I think it's harder) as change your swing as a Golf player.
It can indicate a change in the way games are being played. Something happens similar in baseball where the game can become nothing but home run bombs and strikeouts - which is boring to watch for some (others want nothing but).
I do not know exactly what a baseball bat for tennis is. I have some assumptions as an amateur player and following television over the years about why 1HB is not a thought anymore.
No one is teaching 1HB anymore. Along the way, I went to several tennis schools, and it's quite hard to find a coach that offers training as a 1HB, most of the time because the person is a 2HB himself or herself or does not know what it takes to train a 1HB.
The training itself is tougher. I had a coach who said that for every person that chose 1HB, he demanded at least 600 shots in the tennis wall in comparison with 200 of the 2HB, and with the game being as complex as it is in several other disciplines (footwork, volley, baseline, physical training), the least thing that you can do is to have almost 1 hour extra of training for a single shot.
With the game becoming slower, 1HB became a honeypot for lefty players who could explore it a lot and baseline players who would return every single stroke. When people used to play on the carpet, one average player serving an American twist or a flat on the line made it very hard for a 2BH to return due to the speed and anticipation needed. Today we have 2HB returning 150 MPH serves.
> The training itself is tougher. I had a coach who said that for every person that chose 1HB, he demanded at least 600 shots in the tennis wall in comparison with 200 of the 2HB, and with the game being as complex as it is in several other disciplines (footwork, volley, baseline, physical training), the least thing that you can do is to have almost 1 hour extra of training for a single shot.
This is definitely true. You can get away with poorer technique and still have an ok-ish two-handed backhand because (and i'm heavily simplifying it here) you're using stronger muscles groups.
There are some exceptions. Some people such as myself are profoundly uncoordinated in their non dominant arm, and after playing with a two-handed backhand my entire childhood it still sucked. It took only a few months to go from never having hit a one-handed backend to it eclipsing my two-hander in reliability (context i was ~15 hours a week, so it was still a lot of time commitment). Would it have been better if i'd made the change as a child? Maybe it would have been a lot better, or maybe it would have been a lot worse because i wouldn't have had the physical development and/or the discipline to focus on the fundamentals of the technique at 12 years old versus the age i did change at 19.
Really fascinating that Pete Sampras was coached out of the two handed backhand and that is widely regarded as the catalyst to his ascension to dominance for a decade.
"He was spotted by Dr. Peter Fischer, a pediatrician and tennis enthusiast, who coached Sampras until 1989. Fischer was responsible for converting Sampras's double-handed backhand to single-hand with the goal of being better prepared to win Wimbledon"
Sampras really changed tennis, making baseline players almost obsolete, and I always rooted for Agassi because his game seemed so much more interesting, more about precision than raw power.
It worked in that Sampras won Wimbledon seven times, but he never won the French Open. And Federer only won the French once, when he didn't have to face Nadal in the tournament. Most impressive IMO was Wawrinka's win in the French over Djokovic. (And I should note that Wawrinka appears to have a lot of brute strength in his right arm.)
The backhand was IMO the weak part of Pete's game. Of course his serve was monstrous, overhead was monstrous, net game was good, court movement was off the charts, running forehand incredible. His running forehand provided a lot of cover for the backhand. And as a serve and volley player, he didn't need the backhand as much as other players.
Maybe, in addition to that, different things work for different people. Some people rely on power, some people rely on reach and mobility, some people rely on technique and smart shot-making. It seems entirely possible that a one-hander suited Sampras specifically even if the two-hander is better for most people. I know there are some insecure people here who want to believe there's only One True Racket Sport and One True Way to play it, but personally I believe in (literal) different strokes for different folks.
I haven't played tennis since my childhood, but, even way back then, I was taught that there were two basic strokes: the forehand and the two-handed backhand. The coach had us believe that the one-handed backhand did not exist.
Teaching a two-handed backhand as default is best practice these days, especially with children whose game is most limited by their physical strength. And in group lessons with large coach:student ratios trying to teach two different strokes adds additional overhead - ie more coach time talking and less students hitting.
However, a good coach will look for the dominance between hands. A good two-handed backend, especially the straighter top arm style (driven in line with the shoulders, the more common style in the mens game) is extremely dominant in the top arm. Kids who struggle coordinating that balance of power correctly and pull hard with their bottom arm often struggle to learn a reliable two-handed backend (I was one of them until i changed to a one-hander as a young adult). Those students i would have experiment with one-handed backends.
The problem is, so few coaches my age and younger have one-handed backends they don't know how to teach one.
(I was a tennis coach for 15 years before moving into tech)
One handed power might be less common. But 1 handed backhand slice is very common for players with 2 handed topspin/flat backhands.
This is a common trope that gets thrown around in tennis. Anytime Federer struggled, analysts would have this great hot take, "We will never have 1 handed backhand mens grand slam champion ever again."
Then, Stan Wawrinka wins 3, Dominik Thiem wins 1, and Federer's dominance would continue..
The one handed backhand has always been less popular, which is why I think 'analysts' say its dying. But there are plenty of players crushing 1 handers on the tour right now and there will continue to be in the future.
It's very hard to hit a two handed backhand on the run and keep your balance. I play and would like to see more players hit two handers, but when on the run hit a one hander. Also, I find it easier to hit recovery slices one-handed. I was two-hander all the time, but a few years of squash helped me make my tennis one-hander workable.
I play recreationally and have a 1 OHBH. I started playing on my own and picked it up because of Federer. Now 10 years on and being a little better…I do wish I had a 2 hander. Once you start playing people with either big spin or big pace, the one hander becomes less stable, and there are a lot more things that can go wrong with the take back and forward motion.
Whether we see it more or less on tour will be a reflection of coaching philosophy at the youth level. Sometimes a kid will show more affinity towards on or the other, or try to model a favorite pro…but most of the time they will go with what is taught.
I used to play tennis competitively as a kid/teenager. I settled on 1H BH because I liked the style, thought the movement was beautiful. In my later years playing (around 2003-2004) I definitely suffered because of it, most players were using grippier strings with 2H BH. I didn't have much access to these niche strings, it wasn't easy to import them into my home country, they would get from relatives traveling abroad, I was quite poor and hence played with subpar gear. I tried to adapt by going to a 2H BH for more power but... It's really not my style.
I still play sometimes and will never let go of my 1H BH, there's some part of my child still thinking the movement is absolutely beautiful. Even more when sliding on a clay court.
> The two-handed backhand is far more stable, he said, and the motion is shorter and simpler.
I never learned it; whenever I tried, I found the extra arm just feels like it's in the way. Not only that, but it's not available for helping to balance the body; it feels awkward, like running with your arms tucked to your body.
If you're not a tennis pro, dealing with the power play, there is no point to the two-handed backhand.
It also may be inapplicable to other racket or paddle sports. E.g. I think in badminton it might actually be considered inefficient to hold the racket with two hands.
By the way, you can cheaply obtain power in tennis with looser strings, at the cost of some directional control.
No offense, but by your own admission, this is pure ignorance. Learners should consult an experienced tennis instructor.
The best strokes for a player depend a lot on the individual's circumstances: age, physique, experience, talents, weaknesses, goals, etc. In fact, there are sometimes advantages to a two-handed forehand (usually not at the pro level, though of course Monica Seles was one of the all-time greats).
The article claims that the one-handed backhand is "on the way to extinction" is because of "the increasing role of power and velocity in the sport. Even clay courts, historically the slowest surface, play hard and fast these days. Players, who spend more and more time in the gym, keep getting bigger and stronger, and now hit forehands at more than 100 miles per hour."
So, taking that as the reason for wielding a two-handed backhand, I only posited that "If you're not a tennis pro, dealing with the power play, there is no point to the two-handed backhand" which makes sense in light of the article and doesn't "generalize my idiocyncratic experience to everyone". There is a condition attached in my statement which you omitted in your quote; that condition means it is not an absolute generalization.
"Ignorance" can only be applied to intellectual matters, not to a backhand; not spending time on a tennis backhand doesn't constitute "ignorance", especially if I know that it exists and what it is for.
"Solipsistic" means that I believe a world view in which only my consciousness is real. That is rather a huge leap from my statement about the two-handed backhand.
> So, taking that as the reason for wielding a two-handed backhand
That's your mistake. Here's another quote from the article: "The two-handed backhand is far more stable, he said, and the motion is shorter and simpler." There are a number of good reasons for amateur players to use a two-handed backhand, and that's indeed why countless amateur players do use a two-handed backhand. Are you seriously claiming that they're all wrong, and also all of the tennis instructors who teach them are wrong too?
It's really quite simple: many players, amateur and pro, hit the ball better and play better with a two-hander than with a one-hander. So why wouldn't you use a stroke that makes you play better?
> "Ignorance" can only be applied to intellectual matters, not to a backhand
Disagreed. There are difference kinds of knowledge, e.g., knowledge-that and knowledge-how.
> "Solipsistic" means that I believe a world view in which only my consciousness is real.
Check the dictionary. It also means "very self-centered", for example.
I mean, counterpoint anecdata. I was a bulkier-than-most varsity high-school player and I loved going against skinny guys who did one-handed backhands. I took out a good number of guys who were better than me in every other way by just abusing that (and not being subtle about it. Like, I made it as open and obvious as I could without saying it out loud. They knew what I was doing.) With my, again, even more awkward with someone with my build, two-handed backhand.
Varsity high-school player, and I've seen little discussion of what I'm personally certain is the big change causing all of this (including the surge in pickleball)
It's the rackets -- partly because they're ultra-light, but mostly because of how ridiculously grippy the strings are, meaning you can put absurd spin on the ball.
Meaning, a ton more control from the baseline. This effectively renders net-play most of the time dangerous and impossible. You'll notice, no one goes to the net anymore. It's basically full-scale ping-pong now.
Hence, pickleball for regular people, because they'd like to do that.
> pickleball for regular people, because they'd like to do that.
It's not just regular people (try getting on the court with either Collin Johns or Anna Leigh Waters) but it is because they'd like to do that. Men's pro tennis got pretty stale during the period of the Big Three's dominance, and hasn't recovered yet (though there are signs of hope). Women's pro tennis was and is more interesting, but still shows signs of being dominated by a single style and not even the most interesting one to watch. A lot of people like a faster paced at-the-net game, with more speed variation and sharper angles instead of "hoo-ah" thwack "hoo-ah" thwack from the baseline. If something about how the game has developed is causing so many players to defect, and grippy strings are as good an explanation as any, then it seems like that should at least be acknowledged even if people are OK with it. It's not like tennis is the first sport to go through this, either accepting it or adopting rule/equipment changes to keep the game more appealing.
Except the current world number one, Alcaraz, who goes to the net a huge lot, including when he's returning serves (!). Or the future number one, Djokovic (guaranteed to be number one again by the 11th of September): in the Cincinatti final vs Alcaraz, Djokovic even saved a matchpoint by doing a serve and volley. Followed, the very next ball, by another serve and volley from Djokovic.
I mean: I see plenty of volleying from the two best players of the moment.
I was a HS & college player in the 80s, back when we still used wooden rackets. Frankly I find modern tennis boring. The players mostly hang out along the baseline and there are fewer (IMHO) exciting shots.
I prefer to play with other players who haven't adopted "power supremacy". The games are simply more fun.
I find it remarkable that Kyrgios's name doesn't appear anywhere in these comments. (With the exception of this one). His backhand is a thrilling jolt of lightning.
I always wonder why no one plays with forehands on both sides, i.e., a right-handed forehand and a left-handed forehand. I think that would be such an advantage.
It reduces reach, which is a disadvantage, and most pro players have sufficient swing power on the forehand that the second hand would be superfluous.
Of course Monica Seles utilized the two-handed forehand to great effectiveness.
On the men's side, Fabrice Santoro was probably the most famous and successful two-hander.
It's just different angles and motions and muscles from the forehand and backhand. Physiologically, it's easier to generate pace from the forehand, especially using the rest of your body. On the backhand, the second hand can give you a little extra to make up for the "awkwardness" of the stroke.
Oh, I might have misunderstood the question, because there are players who play a two-hander on both sides, but none who switch hands.
The answer is that most people are dominant on one side, right-handed or left-handed, and their non-dominant side is much weaker, so a right-hander hitting a left hand "forehand" would be much worse. That's just how our brains work. :-)
The thing about baseball is, all hitting strokes are two-handed, so it's more analogous to the two-hander from both sides than the one-hander. Also, baseball hitters don't have to run to the ball. :-)
I would guess that the second hand in baseball helps a lot with stability and accuracy, because a baseball is so much harder than a tennis ball, and the barrel of the bat is so much smaller than the string surface of a tennis racquet.
I still think we need new sports specifically for the modern age and mindset.
Ones designed to not only be low injury risk but also avoid situations where you don't win if you don't take risks.
And also designed so that all the stuff people think is really super cool to watch or do remains a viable strategy.
We've got accelerometers now. Why don't we put them in the sports equipment, detect specific movements, and assign points for stuff we think is beautiful?
You wouldn't have steroid issues if the balls were radar tracked and you got the most points for hitting at an exact speed.
You could make it so there was never a reason to do a high impact lunge towards something, you just wouldn't get any points for that if you trip the G sensor.
It would be like e-sports combined with dance, rather than just a celebration of who has the best body.
That way you don't effectively limit the game to one specific personality type who really likes to push their limits and maybe is willing to do roids.
104 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadOf course there's plenty of interest in amateur pickleball, but there's no evidence that amateur tennis is becoming more about strength and height.
Looks like there is pro pickle ball. Other pro athletes have been buying teams even
Not only is tennis far more athletic - almost like fencing with a ball - it sounds and looks so much better. In tennis, the audible whack at the point of contact with the ball is so satisfying. Pickleball sounds, by contrast, are squeaky and annoying.
Pickleball is more accessible to new and older players, though. And that counts for something.
1. change: "high-level" -> "the highest professional levels". I'd wager Venus could play well easily until her 60s if not longer. There are many levels in tennis. There is are a range of competitive club levels. How often and how intensely she plays is another question.
2. Change: "the" -> "one" (w.r.t. "Pickleball is the sport she can still play.)
Stepping back, in my view, some of the most interesting questions are psychological and personal. If you were to talk to a hundred former tennis pros about aging, what would they say? How much do they play? How does it feel? How do they shift their mindset as their bodies age? To what degree is tennis still fun for them?
If I have to google to discover whether professional pickleball exists, then it's not anywhere near the popularity of other professional sports. I would have heard about the results of pickleball matches in the sports headlines.
> Your reply is just a low-effort attempt to dismiss an idea that makes you uncomfortable, or maybe just to pour derision on something for fun. Show more curiosity.
Please refrain from personal attacks, which are against the HN guidelines.
I don't even understand what you think is supposed to be making me "uncomfortable". I'm perfectly comfortable, thanks.
I was simply disputing this:
> This is rarely good for any sport, and is likely why interest in alternatives is growing.
1) Basically every professional sports is becoming more about strength and height over time, because athletes are getting better over time. Even professional golf, for example, is becoming much more athletic.
2) I don't think there's any evidence or plausibility to the idea that changes in professional tennis explain why pickleball has become popular among amateurs. I'm not disputing the amateur popularity of pickleball. And any growing popularity there may be in professional pickleball is the result rather than the cause of the amateur popularity of pickleball.
Is this a backhanded remark? (pun intended) In conversation, generalization and cross-comparisons happen. Our brains do these things, and it makes for interesting discussion.
There's an implied quantitative model in this comment, but what is being claimed is rather unclear. Until that model gets specified, we could talk in circles about it.
Most would expect that strength matters, but how much? / And how much for what? For winning? For being competitive enough for it to be satisfying and fun? For overall participation levels? / I don't assume a linear effect across age, ability, nor skill. / And how much relative to other qualities? And how much are the factors intertwined?
Here on HN, like most forums, there is a write vs. read imbalance: "write once, read many". If you take a broad view, the implications are clear: it is better when writers put in the effort to be clear, particularly when asked.
There is a common conversational pattern:
(a) One person makes a comment which is somewhat vague.
(b) The next person reads, and despite the ambiguity, responds without asking clarification questions.
(c) Repeat.
Is it a surprise that such conversations have so many failure modes? Some include: (1) talking past each other; (2) not really learning; (3) not getting to know each other; (4) missing an opportunity to connect and build bridges.
I attempted to break the pattern by pointing out the ambiguity and asking clarification questions. This is the norm for sites like Stack Overflow, for good reason.
I have a hypothesis: the above dysfunctional pattern is not widely recognized here on HN. It isn't part of people's awareness; we fall into counterproductive conversational styles without recognizing it.
Sure, there are styles of debate where people try to score points. That's a zero-sum mentality; a waste of our collective effort.
I encourage us to reflect on this question: Given how much time people spend on HN, how many durable personal connections are formed?
> Wow, you are vastly, vastly overthinking this.
This is your opinion. It also comes across as judgmental. Remember: people think differently and to different depths.
I suspected you had more to say. There is no plausible way one could read your mind and go from what you wrote before to what you wrote here.
I'm here to learn and discuss. It doesn't help when people have a dismissive tone in response to questions.
FWIW, I enjoyed many of your comments in this thread. But this one wasn't persuasive to me. If you are curious why, I can explain, but at present, based on your above response, I'm reluctant.
Is that really the case? At present, the world's #1 and #2 men's players are 6'1" and 6'2" respectively. And both well under 200 pounds. These are not giant musclemen by anybody's reckoning. Nadal and Federer were also both 6'1" and quite slim.
It seems to me that tennis is about agility, coordination, and reaction time -- and that great height and remarkable muscle bulk are somewhat disfavored.
The two-handed backhand is apparently a shorter and biomechanically more efficient movement than its single-handed equivalent, is all. And at the top levels of sport, with so much on the line, every small advantage counts.
Before I get too deep - I don't follow tennis. I'm just a sport nerd. I went and grabbed the 2007 and 2023 ATP men's ranking (cause that's whats on ESPN.com) and grabbed the heights of the top 10. Average height in 2007 was 71.8 inches (1.82m) and average height in 2023 was 74.5 inches (1.89m).
Djokovic (who is in top 3 in both lists... absolutely amazing) went from being tied for tallest in the top 10, to being tied for 4th tallest.
Height has risen over time, although the rise is far more pronounced for women than for men.
Perhaps most interesting though is the apparent decrease in height variance from the 1990s onwards. Before that, you had a mix of relatively tall and relatively short champions. But from 1990 onwards, which would seem to coincide with the decline of wooden rackets and the rise of the modern power game, you stopped seeing any champions below 180cm.
It's also worth considering that, even if height confers a significant advantage, its impact is limited by the normal distribution of height in the overall population. Assuming that A) you still need to have exceptional tennis playing ability to become a champion and B) exceptional tennis playing ability is very rare and not correlated with height, then you would expect rather more exceptional players of average height than exceptional players of significantly above average height.
So even if height provided an advantage with no meaningful upper limit, you still might not expect champions of 7'0" because there are just no players with such an unlikely combination of extreme height and extreme ability. You might instead expect a statistical sweet spot where the populations of players with both attributes is large enough that the overlap is where most champions sit.
On a somewhat related topic, fitness has taken over many sports. In field hockey, dribbling used to be a skill. India was unbeaten for decades in Olympics, winning 8-9 gold medals. The introduction of artificial turf ushered in the era of strength and fitness, and the Western nations mostly took over.
Also, too bad that Dimitrov didn't peak higher, but he gave it a go, so there's that.
I got love for G, but you are right, I wish he peaked higher too. I always thought when he saw Thiem win the US Open he got motivated to try and get one himself. But now Alcaraz and a bunch of others that are just too strong. Definitely think he missed his window.
Sounds a little like baseball in the late 90s…
Basically, the benefit of a homerun and the benefit of a strikeout were both better understood and so the balance of the game changed so those were more common outcomes.
Doesn’t topspin reduce bounce height, and backspin increase it?
No, it's the opposite.
tennis: https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/club/lessons/inen/bounce2...
pickleball: http://applecountrypickleball.blogspot.com/2015/12/spin.html
table tennis: https://www.allabouttabletennis.com/table-tennis-techniques-...
edit:
ok now I am very confused, as I can also find reports of the opposite effect, for example:
https://blog.tennisplaza.com/spin-effect-the-physics-behind-...
Can anyone explain why topspin makes a ball bounce lower (matching my experience and some online reports) and also higher (matching some reports in this thread and online)?
All else being equal, both can't be right. So is there some other variable at play, such as velocity, surface coefficient of friction, etc? Or is someone wrong?
Literally from that link: "A ball with topspin bounces higher than a ball with slice."
Oh, well, that site seems pretty sketchy anyway. It wants to force download multiple files as soon as I load it.
FWIW here's Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topspin#Competitive_utility "On most court surfaces, topspin also makes the ball bounce higher. As a result, it is often used on clay or "soft" court surfaces which have a naturally higher bounce in order to make the ball harder for the opponent to hit. An opponent with a one-handed backhand is especially vulnerable to a topspin shot because it is difficult to hit a high ball with a one-handed backhand."
[EDIT:] Reading that sketchy site more closely, it appears to be a trick question:
> So, if you've been paying attention, you might say, "The question at the beginning of this article was a ruse?" Not exactly. In theory, it is possible to hit two balls, one with topspin and one with slice, that arrive with the same height. But in reality, that won’t happen. You have to hit a slice low over the net, otherwise it will fly long. On the other hand, you want to hit a topspin-ball high over the net; otherwise it will land short or in the net.
What makes all the difference in tennis is that topspin and backspin shots go over the net at entirely different angles. You're not just hitting a flat shot with spin.
"The gym" read as "steroids".
I wish people would stop lying about this ...
Yeah this line was the key for me. But I think it is the opposite. They don't play hard and fast, they play hard and slow. This is why, I think, we do not have a lot of serve and volley players nowadays or one-handed backhands, not like the 90s. Because the baseliner has enough time to return your serves.
I watched the Wimbledon final and although Alcaraz went to the nets, it did not feel it is his style like a McEnroe or a Sampras. It felt like it was a strategy against Djokovic. Barely managed to hold on though.
Anyways, I stopped watching tennis a while ago (except the wimbledon finals), there is too much power and bullying involved, not enough grace and beauty. It feels like, I dare say, when field hockey decided to use astroturf instead of grass. In one stroke, all the flair players that relied on the unpredictability of grass were out and "hard running" and "precision scientific passing" won the day. Field Hockey stadiums are now almost always half-full, the beauty is gone.
Football and Rugby, I hope they stay the same.
EDIT: One other thing I noticed is that, in the 90s and early 00s, you had clay court specialists, hard court specialist and grass court specialists. The 4 grand slams were called the Vivaldi 4 seasons, they were that different. Winning all 4 was exceedingly tough. I think, now they are all the same, hard and slow. The variablility and unpredicatability is gone. You win 1, you can win them all.
And why are players expected to remain "loyal" to a stroke?
This headline is oddly phrased.
It appears to be a misuse of language, possibly for clickbait purposes.
Let's say that this is not a "stroke" (for the lack of a better comparison) ask a player to switch from 1HB to 2HB it's more or less hard (I think it's harder) as change your swing as a Golf player.
No one is teaching 1HB anymore. Along the way, I went to several tennis schools, and it's quite hard to find a coach that offers training as a 1HB, most of the time because the person is a 2HB himself or herself or does not know what it takes to train a 1HB.
The training itself is tougher. I had a coach who said that for every person that chose 1HB, he demanded at least 600 shots in the tennis wall in comparison with 200 of the 2HB, and with the game being as complex as it is in several other disciplines (footwork, volley, baseline, physical training), the least thing that you can do is to have almost 1 hour extra of training for a single shot.
With the game becoming slower, 1HB became a honeypot for lefty players who could explore it a lot and baseline players who would return every single stroke. When people used to play on the carpet, one average player serving an American twist or a flat on the line made it very hard for a 2BH to return due to the speed and anticipation needed. Today we have 2HB returning 150 MPH serves.
This is definitely true. You can get away with poorer technique and still have an ok-ish two-handed backhand because (and i'm heavily simplifying it here) you're using stronger muscles groups.
There are some exceptions. Some people such as myself are profoundly uncoordinated in their non dominant arm, and after playing with a two-handed backhand my entire childhood it still sucked. It took only a few months to go from never having hit a one-handed backend to it eclipsing my two-hander in reliability (context i was ~15 hours a week, so it was still a lot of time commitment). Would it have been better if i'd made the change as a child? Maybe it would have been a lot better, or maybe it would have been a lot worse because i wouldn't have had the physical development and/or the discipline to focus on the fundamentals of the technique at 12 years old versus the age i did change at 19.
Extinction: the act of making extinct or causing to be extinguished
How is this NOT an accurate use in this context? Seriously: did this perfectly valid, dictionary acceptable usage actually confuse you?
It's not like nobody is ever going to be able to hit a backhand tennis shot 1 handed ever again.
Therefore it's not extinction.
"He was spotted by Dr. Peter Fischer, a pediatrician and tennis enthusiast, who coached Sampras until 1989. Fischer was responsible for converting Sampras's double-handed backhand to single-hand with the goal of being better prepared to win Wimbledon"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Sampras
Sampras really changed tennis, making baseline players almost obsolete, and I always rooted for Agassi because his game seemed so much more interesting, more about precision than raw power.
My how times change.
The backhand was IMO the weak part of Pete's game. Of course his serve was monstrous, overhead was monstrous, net game was good, court movement was off the charts, running forehand incredible. His running forehand provided a lot of cover for the backhand. And as a serve and volley player, he didn't need the backhand as much as other players.
However, a good coach will look for the dominance between hands. A good two-handed backend, especially the straighter top arm style (driven in line with the shoulders, the more common style in the mens game) is extremely dominant in the top arm. Kids who struggle coordinating that balance of power correctly and pull hard with their bottom arm often struggle to learn a reliable two-handed backend (I was one of them until i changed to a one-hander as a young adult). Those students i would have experiment with one-handed backends.
The problem is, so few coaches my age and younger have one-handed backends they don't know how to teach one.
(I was a tennis coach for 15 years before moving into tech)
This is a common trope that gets thrown around in tennis. Anytime Federer struggled, analysts would have this great hot take, "We will never have 1 handed backhand mens grand slam champion ever again."
Then, Stan Wawrinka wins 3, Dominik Thiem wins 1, and Federer's dominance would continue..
The one handed backhand has always been less popular, which is why I think 'analysts' say its dying. But there are plenty of players crushing 1 handers on the tour right now and there will continue to be in the future.
Whether we see it more or less on tour will be a reflection of coaching philosophy at the youth level. Sometimes a kid will show more affinity towards on or the other, or try to model a favorite pro…but most of the time they will go with what is taught.
I still play sometimes and will never let go of my 1H BH, there's some part of my child still thinking the movement is absolutely beautiful. Even more when sliding on a clay court.
I never learned it; whenever I tried, I found the extra arm just feels like it's in the way. Not only that, but it's not available for helping to balance the body; it feels awkward, like running with your arms tucked to your body.
If you're not a tennis pro, dealing with the power play, there is no point to the two-handed backhand.
It also may be inapplicable to other racket or paddle sports. E.g. I think in badminton it might actually be considered inefficient to hold the racket with two hands.
By the way, you can cheaply obtain power in tennis with looser strings, at the cost of some directional control.
> there is no point to the two-handed backhand.
No offense, but by your own admission, this is pure ignorance. Learners should consult an experienced tennis instructor.
The best strokes for a player depend a lot on the individual's circumstances: age, physique, experience, talents, weaknesses, goals, etc. In fact, there are sometimes advantages to a two-handed forehand (usually not at the pro level, though of course Monica Seles was one of the all-time greats).
But to generalize your idiosyncratic experience to everyone and claim that there's no point to the two-handed backhand is absurd, obtuse, solipsistic.
Moreover, "I never learned it" suggests that you didn't spend a lot of time on it, which does imply ignorance.
So, taking that as the reason for wielding a two-handed backhand, I only posited that "If you're not a tennis pro, dealing with the power play, there is no point to the two-handed backhand" which makes sense in light of the article and doesn't "generalize my idiocyncratic experience to everyone". There is a condition attached in my statement which you omitted in your quote; that condition means it is not an absolute generalization.
"Ignorance" can only be applied to intellectual matters, not to a backhand; not spending time on a tennis backhand doesn't constitute "ignorance", especially if I know that it exists and what it is for.
"Solipsistic" means that I believe a world view in which only my consciousness is real. That is rather a huge leap from my statement about the two-handed backhand.
Please, get a grip.
That's your mistake. Here's another quote from the article: "The two-handed backhand is far more stable, he said, and the motion is shorter and simpler." There are a number of good reasons for amateur players to use a two-handed backhand, and that's indeed why countless amateur players do use a two-handed backhand. Are you seriously claiming that they're all wrong, and also all of the tennis instructors who teach them are wrong too?
It's really quite simple: many players, amateur and pro, hit the ball better and play better with a two-hander than with a one-hander. So why wouldn't you use a stroke that makes you play better?
> "Ignorance" can only be applied to intellectual matters, not to a backhand
Disagreed. There are difference kinds of knowledge, e.g., knowledge-that and knowledge-how.
> "Solipsistic" means that I believe a world view in which only my consciousness is real.
Check the dictionary. It also means "very self-centered", for example.
Mainly due to the repulsive personalities in competitive tennis; but liking it well enough as a recreational activity.
It's the rackets -- partly because they're ultra-light, but mostly because of how ridiculously grippy the strings are, meaning you can put absurd spin on the ball.
Meaning, a ton more control from the baseline. This effectively renders net-play most of the time dangerous and impossible. You'll notice, no one goes to the net anymore. It's basically full-scale ping-pong now.
Hence, pickleball for regular people, because they'd like to do that.
It's not just regular people (try getting on the court with either Collin Johns or Anna Leigh Waters) but it is because they'd like to do that. Men's pro tennis got pretty stale during the period of the Big Three's dominance, and hasn't recovered yet (though there are signs of hope). Women's pro tennis was and is more interesting, but still shows signs of being dominated by a single style and not even the most interesting one to watch. A lot of people like a faster paced at-the-net game, with more speed variation and sharper angles instead of "hoo-ah" thwack "hoo-ah" thwack from the baseline. If something about how the game has developed is causing so many players to defect, and grippy strings are as good an explanation as any, then it seems like that should at least be acknowledged even if people are OK with it. It's not like tennis is the first sport to go through this, either accepting it or adopting rule/equipment changes to keep the game more appealing.
Except the current world number one, Alcaraz, who goes to the net a huge lot, including when he's returning serves (!). Or the future number one, Djokovic (guaranteed to be number one again by the 11th of September): in the Cincinatti final vs Alcaraz, Djokovic even saved a matchpoint by doing a serve and volley. Followed, the very next ball, by another serve and volley from Djokovic.
I mean: I see plenty of volleying from the two best players of the moment.
It's a good thing this is on its way to extinction I reckon.
I prefer to play with other players who haven't adopted "power supremacy". The games are simply more fun.
It reduces reach, which is a disadvantage, and most pro players have sufficient swing power on the forehand that the second hand would be superfluous.
Of course Monica Seles utilized the two-handed forehand to great effectiveness.
On the men's side, Fabrice Santoro was probably the most famous and successful two-hander.
It's just different angles and motions and muscles from the forehand and backhand. Physiologically, it's easier to generate pace from the forehand, especially using the rest of your body. On the backhand, the second hand can give you a little extra to make up for the "awkwardness" of the stroke.
I think the real answer is the switching cost between hands. Not enough reaction time to swap hands in the middle of a play.
The answer is that most people are dominant on one side, right-handed or left-handed, and their non-dominant side is much weaker, so a right-hander hitting a left hand "forehand" would be much worse. That's just how our brains work. :-)
The thing about baseball is, all hitting strokes are two-handed, so it's more analogous to the two-hander from both sides than the one-hander. Also, baseball hitters don't have to run to the ball. :-)
I would guess that the second hand in baseball helps a lot with stability and accuracy, because a baseball is so much harder than a tennis ball, and the barrel of the bat is so much smaller than the string surface of a tennis racquet.
Ones designed to not only be low injury risk but also avoid situations where you don't win if you don't take risks.
And also designed so that all the stuff people think is really super cool to watch or do remains a viable strategy.
We've got accelerometers now. Why don't we put them in the sports equipment, detect specific movements, and assign points for stuff we think is beautiful?
You wouldn't have steroid issues if the balls were radar tracked and you got the most points for hitting at an exact speed.
You could make it so there was never a reason to do a high impact lunge towards something, you just wouldn't get any points for that if you trip the G sensor.
It would be like e-sports combined with dance, rather than just a celebration of who has the best body.
That way you don't effectively limit the game to one specific personality type who really likes to push their limits and maybe is willing to do roids.