The Greatest One-Handed Backhands of the Open Era, Nos. 10-7: Ashe, Edberg, Suarez Navarro, Laver

Our five-part series on The Greatest One-Handed Backhands of the Open Era continues today. Here's the list so far:

• No. 20: Gabriela Sabatini
• No. 19: Dominic Thiem
• No. 18: Amelie Mauresmo
• No. 17: Guillermo Vilas
• No. 16: Gaston Gaudio
• No. 15: Evonne Goolagong
• No. 14: Tommy Haas
• No. 13: Billie Jean King
• No. 12: Ash Barty
• No. 11: Nicolas Almagro

Has your favorite one-hander appeared?

Today, we'll reveal backhands 10 through 7; stay tuned for the next installment on Monday.

No. 10: Arthur Ashe

“Ashe’s backhand is one of the touchstones of modern tennis,” John McPhee wrote in his 1969 book Levels of the Game. “He can underspin it, roll it, hit it flat. He can cradle the ball on his racquet, and hit it with several kinds of timing. He’s got it all.”

Ashe is remembered a wham-bang player, someone who hit with no margin for error and went for broke as soon as he could. But as McPhee said, his one-handed backhand was a subtler affair than that. He could adjust on the fly to whatever came to that side, and change speeds and spins from one shot to the next. While he didn’t have today’s heavy, low-to-high topspin, his flat drive was a killer weapon of its own.

How did Ashe learn it? According to his first coach, Ron Charity, he was tricked. Charity assured a 6-year-old Arthur Jr. that the backhand was the easiest shot in tennis, and Arthur Jr. believed him. Ashe’s second coach, Dr. Johnson, reinforced those early lessons with thousands upon thousands of practice balls. Dr. Johnson believed that the best players were the ones who were eager, rather than afraid, to hit their backhands on the big points.

His student would save two of his biggest backhands for two of the biggest points of his career. After dinking and junking Jimmy Connors for three sets in the 1975 Wimbledon final, Ashe suddenly turned the wham-bang power back on. At 4-4 in the fourth, he delivered the title-winning knockout blows with two screaming winners.

“Like a boxer who had softened up his man,” journalist Richard Evans wrote, “Arthur had decided it was time for the big one-two.”

Both of those big shots, to no one’s surprise, were backhands.

No. 9: Stefan Edberg

By the time Edberg turned pro as a 17-year-old in 1983, he already owned a calendar-year Grand Slam. The young Swede was the first, and so far only, boy to win all four junior majors in a season. But as precocious as his results were, Edberg was something of a throwback as a player, at least from a Swedish perspective. The country’s two Slam-winning stars, Bjorn Borg and Mats Wilander, each used a two-handed backhand and parked themselves at the baseline. By contrast, Edberg, who was coached by Tony Pickard, a British player of the 1950s and '60s, was a graceful serve-and-volleyer who only kept one hand on his backhand.

The shot may have looked a little old-fashioned, but that didn’t make it a liability. Edberg’s backhand was properly updated for the 1980s, an era that was split fairly evenly between net-rushers like John McEnroe, baseliners like Ivan Lendl, and all-courters like Boris Becker. Edberg’s backhand allowed him to straddle all three styles, and reach the finals of all four majors. On clay he could sustain a rally with a mix of drives, slices, and drop shots. On grass and hard courts, he could counter his net-rushing opponents with crisp passing shots and delicately hit backhand lobs. Most of all, Edberg’s one-hander unlocked his net game, and made his transition into the backhand volley easier. Once there, he was second to none.

If there’s a signature Edberg moment, it may be the way he received serve. He danced forward and side to side as the opponent’s toss went up. Then, if the ball came to his backhand side, he would launch himself forward, shorten his swing, and power a flat return back. It was a shot that was equally elegant and utilitarian, and it caught one particular young Swiss player’s eye. Roger Federer liked Edberg’s game, and his backhand, so much that he hit one himself, and later hired the Swede to coach him on how to use it to unlock his own net game. Edberg’s one-hander began as a throwback in the '80s, and ended as an inspiration for one of the best of this century.

No. 8: Carla Suarez Navarro

Suarez Navarro was not an intimidating presence on the court. She’s 5-foot-4, she didn’t have a big serve, she stared at the ground when she walked, and she wasn’t known to get in anyone’s face about anything. But if you gave her any time to hit a backhand, she would put the ball past you in an effortless flash.

Like her fellow Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, Suarez Navarro’s one-hander is not on this list because of how dominant she was with it. This isn’t to say she didn’t have an excellent career, especially for someone her size. She reached No. 6 in the world, and made seven Grand Slam quarterfinals, all without getting many free points on her serve. But her backhand is here because it may have been the most elegant one-hander of all.

When she had time, CSN took a long, high backswing, used a deep knee bend, and drove through the ball on her front leg. When she didn’t have time, she could hit it just as well off her back foot, and with a simplified stroke. Either way, she whipped the racquet through the hitting zone and finished high over her head. For all of that motion, she never appeared to be working hard or swinging with all her might. Yet the ball could still find its way into the corner, or within an inch of the sideline, for a winner that left her opponent flabbergasted—and occasionally applauding.

Like Almagro, Suarez Navarro, who bounced back from a bout with Hodgkin’s lymphoma before retiring in 2021, is properly memorialized with a highlight-reel clip on YouTube, titled “Carla Suarez Navarro—50 backhand winners.” (Watch above.) We’ll miss Roger Federer’s one-hander in the years to come, and Ash Barty’s, but some of us might miss Suarez Navarro’s and its easy beauty most of all. Hopefully another young woman, somewhere, saw her sweet swing and wanted to hit it like that, too.

No. 7: Rod Laver

“I worked hard to improve my backhand and make it as natural a stroke for me as my forehand,” Laver said.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the ever-unassuming Rocket would describe his one-hander in such workmanlike and self-effacing terms. His backhand, after all, was just one cog in a well-oiled machine that made him the only two-time calendar-year Grand Slammer. If the shot hasn’t been lavishly praised by others over the years, either, that’s just a sign of how solid he was in every part of the game. From the start, all-around excellence was Laver’s goal.

“He was a stickler for correct form,” he said of his first coach, Charlie Hollis. “By putting me through endless drills, he taught me to hit every stroke—serve, forehand, backhand, volley, lob, slice and smash—as perfectly as I could.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean Laver’s backhand was ordinary. When he was young, he was a self-described “flashy” player, and he hit his single-hander the way he hit all of his strokes, with urgency and compact abandon. He had the slice, but with his long extension and trunk-like left forearm, he could also drive the ball and hit it with more topspin than most of his contemporaries. He used the shot to transition to net, to block returns at his opponent’s feet, and to throw up deftly-placed slice or topspin lobs. It was a quiet difference-maker.

“My stroke technique was based on quick shoulder turns, true swings, and good timing,” Laver said, again in customarily unpretentious terms. “I was adept at hitting my backhand on the run, which won me many points.”

That seeming simplicity, though, covered up a fair share of tactical trickery. Laver credited his fellow Aussie great Lew Hoad with teaching him how to disguise his crosscourt backhand.

“He’d roll his wrist this way and that, and make a shot that looked as if it was going straight down the line,” Laver said of Hoad. “I could do this when it mattered, too, at break point.”

Whatever part of tennis you want to talk about, Laver did it in exemplary fashion. That went double for his single-handed backhand.

Coming Monday: Backhands No. 6-3