The Last One-Handed Backhand: Wawrinka's US Open Farewell and the Extinction of a Weapon

New York, Grandstand Court 5 – not Arthur Ashe, not Louis Armstrong. I stood in the farthest corner, where I could clearly see the swing angle of the 41-year-old Swiss player's racket. Third set, score 0-4, Wawrinka was still running. But his legs were no longer the legs that defeated Novak Djokovic in the 2026 US Open final. They were the legs of a man who had given everything he had left in the first two tiebreak sets. The match ended 7-6(4), 7-6(3), 6-0 in favor of Matteo Berrettini. Two tight tiebreak sets, then a bagel. I noted it down like a law: his body could no longer sustain the intensity required at Grand Slam level. But what I observed more closely was the one-handed backhand – the weapon that defined his career – still swinging fully in sets one and two, then collapsing completely in set three. Wawrinka is not the last one-hander on tour. But he is the last of his generation to win Grand Slams with it. In the current top 100, only 5 players use a one-hander: Musetti, Shapovalov, Tsitsipas, Altmaier, Kovacevic. None of them have won a Grand Slam. This fact raises the question: are we witnessing the end of a technique, or the end of an era? Based on my experience following matches from Melbourne to Moscow, I see that the decline of the one-handed backhand is not just a technical issue. It's a physical one. Wawrinka's own diagnosis: modern players 'play really hard from both sides.' The two-handed backhand offers superior stability against heavy topspin to the backhand corner – the primary targeting pattern in modern baseline tennis. The one-hander requires perfect timing, precise footwork, and extraordinary wrist strength to neutralize high-bouncing topspin. Wawrinka's generation was the last to develop those skills at the elite level. But there's a paradox in this story. Wawrinka's one-handed backhand was not a natural choice. At age 11, his coach switched him from a two-hander to a one-hander because his two-hander was 'terrible.' That decisive intervention created one of the most feared backhands in men's tennis history. From 2026 to 2026, Wawrinka's backhand could end points from defensive positions – something most players could only return. He beat the world No. 1 in all three of his Grand Slam finals: Nadal at the 2026 Australian Open, Djokovic at the 2026 French Open, and the 2026 US Open. Three finals, three meetings with the world No. 1, three victories. The numbers tell the story: 46 winners in the 2026 US Open final, 60 winners in the 2026 French Open final. These numbers are not just statistics – they are evidence that the one-handed backhand, when properly developed, can still be a point-ending weapon at the highest level. The problem is not the technique, but the time and physicality required to master it. Wawrinka needed to be 29 to win his first Grand Slam – a 'late bloomer' pattern rare among multi-Slam champions. Wawrinka's departure marks the formal end of the Big Three era. Two days before his farewell, Roger Federer was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Djokovic remains active but is 37 and declining. The new generation – Alcaraz and Sinner – have already won 6 Grand Slams combined. Wawrinka was the last non-Big-Three player of his generation to win multiple Slams. This fact makes his farewell more symbolically significant than his own career. But there's a contrarian angle I want to offer. The extinction of the one-handed backhand is not an inevitable evolution of tennis. It's a conscious choice of the training system. Modern tennis academies prioritize short-term results – the two-hander is easier to teach, easier to maintain, easier to achieve quick effectiveness. The one-hander requires a patience that the modern training system does not have. Wawrinka is proof that patience can produce extraordinary results – but he is also proof that such patience is increasingly rare. As I left the Grandstand, I saw thousands of people lined up outside – people who came to say goodbye to a technique, not just a person. Wawrinka said: 'One of the reasons I played until 41 was to live these moments.' I understand that. He wasn't just saying goodbye to tennis; he was saying goodbye to a way of playing that he was one of the last to master. The question is not whether the one-handed backhand can return, but whether we still have the patience to wait for another Wawrinka to emerge. The first match doesn't decide a life, but it decides how you listen to every match after. And I listened very carefully to this last one.