Only 6 Players in the ATP Top 100 Use a One-Handed Backhand (2026 Data)

This article is about how rare the one-handed backhand has become in the ATP top 100 — and whether that rarity means the shot is being eliminated at the top, or simply not being taught anymore.

The one-handed backhand is supposed to be dying. Coaches stopped teaching it, academies moved on, and the modern game’s topspin has made it harder to sustain at the highest level. That got us thinking: if the shot really is obsolete, surely it would disappear first from the top 100?

So we pulled every player in our rankings database — 2,233 of them — and logged their backhand grip from ATP tour profiles. What we found was more nuanced than the usual “the one-hander is dead” headline.

The headline numbers

In the current ATP top 100, 93 players use a two-handed backhand. Only 6 use a one-hander. One player — J. Struff at #80 — has no grip recorded in the ATP profile data.

Nearly 19 in 20 elite players have moved away from the shot. But here’s the thing — that share holds up across most of the ranking spectrum:

The top 50 dips slightly to 4% — just Musetti (#11) and Shapovalov (#39). Below that, the figure sits at roughly 7–9% across every bracket. We’re not claiming that’s statistically bulletproof; a few players moving in or out of a bracket can shift the percentage. But it doesn’t look like the one-hander is being filtered out by elite competition. The players who use it can still get there. There just aren’t many of them left who try.

The 6 survivors

Here they are — every one-handed backhand in the current ATP top 100:

A few things stood out.

Mpetshi Perricard is 201cm and only 22 — the tallest and youngest one-hander in the top 100, turning pro as recently as 2021. The shot is not extinct among the new generation.

Tsitsipas is coached by his father, Apostolos Tsitsipas. The family bet on the one-hander when Stefanos was a junior, at a time when most Greek academies had long since switched to two-handed coaching.

Shapovalov is a genuinely unusual case: he plays left-handed and uses a one-handed backhand — the only player in the entire top 100 to combine both. Across the full 2,233-player database, only 15 players use that combination at any ranking level.

Please note: Dimitrov and Wawrinka — both famous one-handers — are still in our database, but ranked #168 and #113 respectively as of June 2026. They no longer appear in the top 100, which is partly why this article’s count dropped from what we might have written a few months ago.

Method to the madness

We used the plays field from ATP tour player profiles as stored in our PostgreSQL database (rankings.scraped_at: 2026-06-01). When ATP lists “Right-Handed, One-Handed Backhand”, we counted it as a one-hander. When the field is blank — as with Struff — we excluded that player from the percentage calculations rather than guessing.

This is not perfect. ATP profile data lags behind real-world coaching changes, and the backhand field is not always maintained with the same care as ranking points. But it’s consistent across all 2,233 players, which is what we cared about for this analysis.

Are one-handers taller?

Slightly. The average height of the 6 one-handers in the top 100 is 189.2cm, compared to 187.5cm for their two-handed counterparts. The gap isn’t large enough to be conclusive, but it’s consistent with a theory that taller players — with a longer reach and a naturally higher contact point — find the mechanics of the one-hander less punishing against heavy topspin. We wouldn’t stake too much on 1.7cm, though.

They’re a touch younger, actually

The average age of one-handers in the top 100 is 25.7 years, versus 26.5 for two-handers. That’s the opposite of what we expected when we first ran this analysis on older data — the cohort has refreshed as Dimitrov and Wawrinka slipped out of the top 100 and younger one-handers like Mpetshi Perricard moved in.

Which countries produce the most one-handers?

Looking across the full ranked database (not just the top 100):

France tops the list — the same country that has 4 left-handers in the top 100 alone. Whether that reflects something specific in French tennis development or is partly coincidence is hard to say, but France consistently produces players with less conventional technique than the global average.

The France left-hander note

4 of the top 100 players are both left-handed and French:

Four left-handers from a single country in the top 100 is still a striking cluster. H. Gaston — who appeared in earlier versions of this dataset — is now ranked #118 and outside the top 100.

Who sits at #1 today?

J. Sinner and C. Alcaraz — both right-handed, two-handed backhand. The current top 10 contains no one-handers at all. Musetti, the highest-ranked one-hander, sits at #11.

What the data actually says

The two-handed backhand dominates in 2026 because it works. It’s easier to generate topspin against a high ball, easier to defend wide, and quicker to develop to a competitive standard. The one-hander’s advantages — disguise, slice, the down-the-line pass — are real but narrow, and they demand exceptional timing that most players never consistently achieve.

But the data doesn’t support the idea that the one-hander is being eliminated by elite competition. At roughly 7–9% across most ranking brackets, the shot holds a stable — if small — place in professional tennis. The players who master it get to the top. There just aren’t many of them left who try.

Built from our data

Every number in the tables above came from a direct SQL query against the Baseline Rank PostgreSQL database. If you’re building a tennis app and need structured ATP rankings data without the scraping headache, that’s what the Baseline Rank API provides.

Data sourced from the Baseline Rank rankings database, June 2026. Backhand type, height, and coaching data sourced from ATP tour player profiles. Historical figures (weeks at #1, Grand Slam counts) are publicly documented ATP records.