One of my friends sent me a video of Patrick Mouratoglou ranking his top five favorite one-handed backhands. It’s garbage.

I don’t care if Rodger Federer won like a billion slams. I have a one-handed backhand and I’m left-handed, which means that it’s under a lot of scrutiny, and out of all of the backhands that I have tried to model my shot after, Roger Federer’s is the least desirable.

Seriously, most players with a one-handed backhand use that shot because it’s good. They can pay bills with it. Roger Federer is backhand is a one-handed backhand because he wanted to be like Pete Sampras. All of his Junior career the other juniors figured they were going to beat Roger Federer because he was too weak to hit the stupid thing. One of the biggest necessities of a one-handed backhand is that you actually have a strong enough back and shoulders to hit it. And Federer just don’t have that. Nothing against him but Rafael Nadal could wear fed’s one hander down but not pose the same problem with other players.

It’s because when Rafa hits the high spinning lefty forehand to feds backhand jumps up around his shoulder level. Federer doesn’t have the shoulder strength to handle that sort of jumping ball constantly. He also doesn’t have the shoulder strength to spin the ball fast enough to neutralize the rally so that the ball doesn’t go to his backhand every time. He doesn’t have the strength to turn defense into offense either so he could use his forehand to command the points. The fact that he even tries to run around his backhand to hit a forehand should take him completely out of the discussion for top five greatest backhands of all time. That’s like when we found out that Drake had a ghostwriter. He can’t be the best Lyricist of all time if he has somebody right in his rhymes for him. Can’t be one of the best backhands of all time if you rely on your forehand. 

Even in the highlight real you can see that most of feds great backhands are based on his magnificent timing, speed, shot variety and not because Its a weapon. He ORGANIZES his backhand so well but that’s because people have been HAMMERING ON IT ALL HIS LIFE! The backhand slice is really the shot you should steal from Fed. You could take THAT shot to the bank. I can’t believe that people tried to take his topspin backhand technique just because he was winning.

Because of Roger, everybody with a one-handed backhand buys his racket and doesn’t have the strength to swing around that heavy thing. So we have a whole generation of people with Pro staff 6.1 racquets that can’t hit a topspin backhand to save their life. If you try looking up a used Wilson 6.1 90 Federer signature racket, you are not going to find one with a head guard that hasn’t been destroyed under $130 from Federer wannabes trying to slice too much and scraping their rackets all over the ground.

Roger Federer copied his game from Pete Sampras. But Pete Sampras’s shoulders are HUGE! Pete was always throwing around medicine balls and training, so he could use his shoulders and back to come over that shot repeatedly, even if it wasn’t his strongest shot.

Fed on the other hand is not one of those guys who hits the gym like he should. He’s a virtuoso that normally plays points when he trains. He’s more of an agility, coordination type of player.  And Rafa exposed him by not trying to pick on his speed but by putting him in the same place and making him use his muscles.

Arguably the best Fed’s Backhand has ever been was the 2017 Australian Open Final against Rafa Nadal. He had just picked up Ivan Ljubicic as a coach and Ivan made Fed come over the ball more. According to tennisabstract.com, 72 winners. 34 Forehands, 18 Backhands. Thats almost 2 to 1!!!

To give you a little contrast Gustavo Kuerten Won Roland Garros 3 times. The last time he won was 2001 and he had 33 winners 18/15.

As a lefty, my backhand has to be good or my forehand has to be a straight atomic bomb.  I’m not packing any wmds so I have to strive to make the one hander special. Here is my list of one-handed backhands that I have admired and it does not include Roger Federer.

In no particular order (No serve and Volley):

Tommy Haas

Lorenzo Musetti

Richard Gasquet

Stan Wawrinka

Gustavo Kuerten

Nicholas Almagro

Thomas Muster

Mikhail Youzhny

Dominic Thiem

Philip Kohlschreiber

Denis Shapovalov

Grigor Dimitrov

Tommy Robredo

Gaston Gaudio (Barely…I think that its slightly better)

Don’t get me wrong!! Federer’s BH is the best out of the players that BOMB FOREHANDS for a living. Better than James Blake, Fernando Gonzalez and the like. But to me its not in the top five if you are looking for a reason not to hit it.