Since deciding that my own backhand had some issues, I wanted to turn and look at a couple players whose backhand technique is my favorite, and in my opinion have the best mechanics. I believe these players possess the backhand swings of the modern professional game.
The first players backhand I’d highlight is Nour El Sherbini. Her backhand is in my opinion by far the best on the women’s side. Her preparation is amazing, she gets her arm and racket across her body so early, which gives herself tons of time to line up the swing. What’s impressive to me about her swing, is that her racket preparation is very “still”, meaning her racket has almost no wiggle when she sets it before starting her swing, but it also looks completely fluid and not mechanical or robotic which can be a byproduct of such early prep. She strikes the balance perfectly between doing all of her fundamentals incredibly early and almost exaggerated, without giving up her fluidity and ability to improvise at any time. Her swing has no hitches or wasted movements.
She also does an incredible job of keeping her arm extended, and tight across her body, while generating most of her power from forearm (and thus wrist) rotation. This gives her the ability to generate power without changing the look of her swing much, and the swing on her chipped drives look incredibly similar to her swing when she is hitting with power, or cutting it in short. If you compare her arm position to that of other players, her hand is generally drawn lower and further across her body, and her arm is less bent at the elbow. All of her shots look very similar until the last second, and you can see how the women on tour struggle to read and react to what shot she is playing, with even the strongest movers such as Gohar often initially shifting the wrong direction and having to recover.
I’ll take a look at my favorite backhand on the men’s side in Part 2 – coming soon!