Terra Tennista

Howdy, everyone. I'll have news of some interesting new developments, including possible French Open Tribal gatherings in Los Angeles, New York and Paris, tomorrow on the morning OT thread. Make sure you check it out.

Some administrative issues have kept me busy most of the day, but  here's something I've been pondering for a few weeks now. Which is the superior tool, the one or two-handed backhand? It seems to me that Bjorn Borg, Chris Evert, and Jimmy Connors launched a two-hander craze that has had enormous downstream repercussions - so much so that those three individuals are perhaps more responsible for the way the game is played today than racquet and string technologies or court surfaces. And that may be a more interesting and noteworthy than the simple title count they put up, for there is no real legacy  element in winning tournament - just pure honor and acclaim.

That this was an epochal and historic revolution is beyond question: just scroll down the champions roll at any Grand Slam to see what I mean. My counting ability is notoriously unreliable (I'm a person, not a crow, right?) By my count, in 30 years  (essentially, the beginning of the Borg/Connors/Evert era) at the Australian Open, two-handers won 13 times. At Roland Garros, on the slowest surface a twp-handed backhander has won the title on 17 occasions. But n the 30 years since Borg first won Wimbledon, two-handers won a paltry 8 times, but that's the least friendly of surfaces to the two-handed game, and Pete Sampras alone accounted for seven of those one-handed titles. At the U.S. Open, theoretically the most neutral of surfaces, speed-wise, two-handers won 9 times.

Now, let's look at the women. In the last 30 years at Melbourne and Roland Garros, we have a dead-even 15-15 divide. At Wimbledon, two-handers were routed, winning just 9 times. New York is the only place where two-handers hold the outright edge winning 18 of 30 titles. I am somewhat surprised by the strong showing by female one-handers; it's counter-intuitive, at least to me, and certainly negates the argument that somehow the use of two hands is more critical to women, who are basically less strong than their male counterparts.

There are some variables, like change of surface and venue over the years at two of these Grand Slams, but there's no way to quantify the impact of that so I won't even try.

Now let's look at another statistic: Top 10 players of 2006, 1996, 1986. Last year, six of the year-end male Top 10 played with the two-hander. IN '96. the number was also six. In '86, four Top Tenners used the two-handed backhand. Among the women, seven of the top women were two-handers last year, while in 1996 , five of the Top 10 women had two-handers, and in 1986, just three of the Top 10 played with two-hand on the backhands.

So it seems that the two-hander edges out the single-handed grip as the stroke of choice for Top 10 grade players, but the evidence also suggests that the one-hander is - by far - the "grip of champions." Roger Federer, Pete Sampras, Ivan Lendl, Ivan Lendl, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova - those are some powerful arguments for playing the one-handed backhand.

Yet even if the very best players are/were one-handers, the preponderance of top players who use the dual grip may have shaped the modern game. It's likely that the aforementioned multiple Grand Slam champions have weathered the changes in the game, rather than shaping it. It's an interesting, fairly weird state of affairs, based on what appears to be in irrefutable fact of tennis history:  The Borg-era players set the game on a new course at a critical time, when large, formerly fallow or insignificant portions of terra tennista were just discovering the game on a large scale. Their collective impact would shape it for generations to come in a process that is ongoing today.

Not long ago, Ivan Lendl remarked that if he were developing his game today, he would have adopted the two-handed backhand. This is a strange confession to make, given Lendl's superior record. But he reasoned that in today's game of powerful racquets and booming serves, the extra "solidity" (my word)  offered by the two-hander helps any returner make forceful, aggressive returns. If the early portion of the Open era belonged to the servers, the latter certainly belongs to the returners. Lendl's comment further underscores the idea that two-handers have shaped the game , because it implies that the two-handed backhand has enabled returners to diminish the traditional advantage on which the entire game and scoring system is based: you are supposed to hold serve, because initiating a point with a powerful statement (the serve), and one which is entirely under your control, is a clear advantage; the way to win at tennis is to hold your own serve and get a break against your opponent's serve somewhere  along the way. That's still true, but much less so than before.

Before I started fooling around with the stats, I was going to make the argument that I've come around to being an advocate for the two-handed backhand. This was a logical outgrowth of my evolution as a tennis fan. Many years ago, I was a fool for love. That is, I worshiped before the altar of touch, creativity and variety; the ruling Deity was Ilie Nastase, who is still the most aesthetically pleasing player I've ever had the pleasure to watch.

Over the years, though, I came to believe that the real glory of tennis lay not in the demonstration of skills and talents, but in winning tennis matches. That is, tennis is not a performance, like modern dance or juggling. It is a competition. It's kind of like the journey that takes you from being a political liberal to neo-conservative (you know how that's been described: A neo-conservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality). In this case, the "reality" was the fact that the main purpose of the game is to win it, and those who did - especially with noteworthy frequency - represented the highest order of player, aesthetics be danged. But there's nothing wrong with having it both ways: The truly great thing about Roger Federer is that he is both a winner and an aesthetically pleasing player. That is, he's not just rich, he's beautiful.

Chris Evert once told me that she always roots for the favorite in sports, and I challenged her on the grounds that the attitude just represented another of those "the rich taking care of the rich" impulses. She said that wasn't quite right: she pulled for the favorite because she knew from experience how difficult it was to actually be the favorite, and the special pressures that only favorites have to carry around with them. There's a reason we keep score instead of awarding style points, and in my book prevailing in a head-to-head competition that is scored is a more daunting, complex undertaking than performing feats of skill and dexterity to see how well you can place on a degree-of-difficulty index.

So I was going to declare a preference for the two-hander as the more lethal and serviceable of the backhands, and then I looked at the record book. The implication of the stats is clear: if you want to bet the house on your daughter being the next Steffi Graf, feel free to concentrate on the one-hander. Ifyou want to maximize her career opportunities and hedge your bet, choose the two-hander.