The Origin Of The One-Handed Backhand Grip

The one-handed backhand grip in tennis is quite easily defined and learned with simple guidelines that tell you where to place the “V” between the thumb and the index finger on a specific bevel of the handle.

But what’s interesting is that, even though the stroke is called a “backhand,” we actually do not align the back of the hand towards the ball at contact.

Tennis players who just use common sense and have perhaps played table tennis in the past will actually have trouble figuring out the correct one-handed backhand grip for the game of tennis.

In this video article, you’ll learn the differences between a table tennis backhand grip and a tennis backhand grip as well as why we hold the racket in tennis in a way that’s not really common sense.

The Table Tennis Backhand Grip Vs The Tennis Backhand Grip

When we play table tennis and switch from a forehand to the backhand, we don’t change the grip (like in tennis). Instead, we simply flip the hand.

When we’re hitting a forehand, the forward part of the hand (palm) faces the incoming ball, and when we play the backhand, the back of the hand faces the ball.

It all makes perfect logical sense.

Another reason why the back of the hand fully faces the ball is because we close the racket at contact quite a lot in table tennis to impart topspin. At that moment, the back of the hand is literally facing the ball.

A tennis racket is much heavier than a table tennis paddle. When we swing, the weight exerts much greater force on the wrist.

Another force that affects the wrist is the force of impact with a tennis ball, which is of course also much harder then the impact of a ping pong ball against a table tennis paddle.

To better illustrate why we need a much more stable wrist in tennis than in table tennis, let’s look at the idea of pushing something heavy (with a handle) forward away from you.

If I want to push this mini football goal that is actually quite heavy, I could do it in two ways:

• either with the palm on top of the bar or
• with the palm below the bar.

Using either approach, I would feel a very stable wrist with no pain.

But if I approach the bar with the back of the hand, which is the way we hit a table tennis backhand, then I would feel a very weak wrist position.

If I pushed strongly into the goal bar, my wrist would start to hurt.

That shows us that the common sense idea of approaching the ball with the back of the hand does not work when the forces are stronger.

We need a more stable and strong wrist position, and we can achieve that by placing the palm against the bar with the fingers above it.

That means that the back of the hand now points upwards, which is 90 degrees away from the bar. When it comes to tennis, this is 90 degrees away from the ball.

Don’t Flip The Hand But Turn It

If you happen to have a mental image from playing table tennis of switching from a forehand to a backhand by flipping the hand, you’ll need to change it.

When it comes to tennis hand positions, we don’t flip the hand, but simply turn it.

When we hit a forehand, the palm of the hand is facing the ball and the fingers are pointing downwards at around a 45-degree angle.

When we want to position the hand for the one-handed backhand, we simply shift it by 90 degrees so that the palm still faces the ball but the fingers are now pointing at around 45 degrees upwards.

Keep in mind that this is just a simple explanation of how the hand is aligned at contact for the forehand and one-handed backhand strokes in tennis.

I am NOT explaining how to switch the grip in a real situation when you want to switch from a forehand to the one-handed backhand.

I’ve shared how to switch the grips before, and of course it still applies.

This article is more of an eye-opener that gives you another perspective on how to hold the one-handed backhand grip in tennis because it is not very logical at first glance.

Switching from a forehand to a backhand in table tennis makes much more sense, but if we apply the same logic to tennis strokes, it will not work.

The one-handed backhand in tennis requires a much more stable wrist position, which is achieved only when the back of the hand is at around 90 degrees away from the contact point.