The one handed backhand is one of the most elegant shots in tennis when it's done the right way. And in this video, we're going to show you exactly what are the five fundamentals to hitting a great one handed backhand. If you don't have these five fundamentals, you're not going to be able to hit a reliable and consistent one-handed backhand. 

But if you do have these fundamentals, the sky is open to whatever you want to do with your one-handed backhand. So let's get started. Like I said before, the five fundamentals to hitting a great one-handed backhand aren't hard, but you have to nail each one of them at the right time, and it's really important to you to understand what these fundamentals are and how to reproduce them over and over and over again. 

And this will give you the one-handed backhand that you're really wanting. So let's start with the first fundamental. What is it? It's the grip. You got to have the right grip, and I see so many players, they have the incorrect grip to have a great -one handed backhand. They usually have like, let's say, a shake hands type grip. 

And what happens is you have no stability when the ball hits your strings. Finally, the grip for the one-handed backhand is really simple. Simply hold the racquet in front of you and grab it with your knuckles on top.

One thing you're really trying to do with the one handed backhand grip is create some stability, and the way you do this is position this part of your hand against the back of the racquet. If you notice when I push on this part here, it's pretty meaty, but you feel the bone resisting even if I push hard.

 And so you want to center that right behind the strings here. So when the ball hits, you feel it pushing up against that, and it creates this much more solid feel. As you rotate your hands to high and my wrist pops up, you're going to feel, Oh, that's a lot of stress on your wrist and you don't want that. 

So really, make sure you have a solid handle on the grip, because that's going to be the most important element as we move forward through the other four fundamentals. The next fundamental is going to be the unit turn.

That's how we prepare and get the racquet ready to start swinging, and it's really simple, but so many players miss this part about it. What a lot of players do in those mistakes they make is they sit here and try to time the entire swing, which results in poor timing being late because with the one-handed backhand, unlike the two, you don't have a second hand.

They help you get the rack around. You only have your one hand. So if you're late, it's going to be really late and it's going to be really awful. We don't want that. So the very first move is the unit turn and the unit turn is simply turning your shoulders to the side just like this.

Two things it prepares your racquet, but it also sets your body up to coil, which creates a little bit of power. And this is why you'll learn that through adding all these different elements together, they add up to create more power on your one-handed backhand without you having to muscle it. 

So again, the unit turner has two parts of it. First part is to turn sideways, making sure that my shoulders here and it positions my racquet on the side. The next part is actually turning your toe out in the direction you're going to move, so you would do it together where you would turn sideways and turn your toe, which allows you to move in that direction if you need to go get the ball. 

The next part is going to be the racquet drop. It's really important after we get to this unit turn that we're going to drop the racket at below the ball by dropping the racket below the ball and allows us to then brush up on the ball later.

But the first key parts about dropping the racket under the ball is making sure that when we're in this position, dropping the racket is simply like a windshield wiper move where I'm just going to let the wrist relax and drop down. 

Next, you're going to have the butt of the racket facing away from you. The reason you want this is because it creates leverage, meaning that I can pull the handle a little bit and the head goes even faster. So by having my hand in this position, when I do decide to pull forward, it's going to allow me to leverage that and pull the head of the racquet through the ball, creating more power. 

This is probably one of the biggest mistakes a lot of players are making with their one-handed backhand. They don't have any leverage, so it feels like you have to be really strong. You have to leverage your arm and your shoulder just to push through the ball. If you feel that it's because you don't have this leverage position that allows you to really drive the racket through the ball and create a lot of effortless pace. 

The next difference is how we're going to use our body because our body provides most of the power that we´re going to use to swing through the ball. And what I mean by that is we're going to initiate our hips, and initiation is really simple with us in this position and then we drop.

All we're going to do is turn our hips and then stop. It's going to send energy up our back to our shoulder, down to the arm and really try to send that racket forward. And that's what we want. That's how we create the power on the one-handed backhand. 

From this, we'll move into the contact, which is the fourth element of the fundamentals. Once we initiate with our hips and turn it forward and have that contact in front, we want to make contact with our arm fully extended in front of us.

This is super important because it's going to add the most stability to your contact. Once you make contact in front of you, the next element with contact is understanding the racquet face with the contact. If your racquet face is to open, it's going to send the ball to high if your back faces to close. It's going to send the ball to low. 

And this again, is why our grip is so important by holding the racket this way. It allows you to adjust your racquet face without having to change your grip, which means we can be consistent at contact from here. It's time to talk about the final step, which is our follow through from contact.

We're going to pull the racket up and across our body and simply have the racket in a very extended position, reaching all the way to the side with our arm extended. It's really from here. We're relaxing and letting the racket go all the way through the contact. 

Ok, so if we put everything together, we have the grip, which adds stability, then we have the unit turn and the racket drop, then we're going to initiate our hips and pull the racket to contact and all the way around. 

Now when you're practicing this, this is all going to be one fluid movement where we're going to turn wait and then the downward drop and the initiation is going to happen to slingshot the racket through the ball and making sure we can drive that racket through the ball with a lot of power and top spin.

 Now it's time to talk about the action steps for the one-handed backhand. I think one of the most important things for the one-handed backhand, and it's understanding this phase from the drop and to the pool. And if you can understand that you can create a lot of topspin, you can be aggressive and have a lot of margin and safety on your backhand while still swinging aggressively at the ball. 

Most players have this straight type swing, and they know they can't really achieve the type of backhand they want because they're either bunting or forcing or slowing down the racket through the ball.

So the first thing I want you to do to really start thinking about how I can start creating a more aggressive style backhand is make sure we have a backhand grip and pretend you're twisting a doorknob. So from here, all I'm going to do is turn my racket over. 

Now, even though we're starting with this motion right here, I want you to feel it's not just my wrist doing it, but it's your entire arm and shoulder rotating the racket over, and there should be a fair amount of force. Not like we're trying to muscle it really fast, but just a nice, smooth action from here. All I want you to do is shadow.

 A couple swings where we get a racquet in this position and we're going to take it down and low. And this should look like that position where we talked about after the racquet drop. This is where we're starting from, really focusing after the racquet drop. 

Now from this position, after I pull forward as I'm pulling and create that momentum, I'm going to start rolling my shoulder and arm over. What you're going to notice is as I finish, the strings are going to be facing sideways. Ok, so it's going to be from here to here, and it still holds true.

Wherever the racquet face is looking at contact, that's where the ball is going to go. So as I'm doing this action, I want to make sure that my racket faces very straight, very up and down, or even sometimes open if I want the ball to go high as I rotate and finish here. 

So go ahead and shout out a couple of times and really just get used to this, that feeling of having it here. Now we're not going to go through the whole motion from here to here because this is the key component of just making sure you're here. 

If you can just get to that component and really learn to pull the racquet, you're going to develop a really strong, solid, on- handed backhand and this is going to be the area we're going to focus on for this particular action step. 

Now from here, we're going to set ourselves up, I would say, probably eight 10 feet away from the net and just simply hold your rack in this position and practice shadowing at one time and then have a ball in your opposite hand. Toss it in front.

All we're going to do is easy. Just practice hitting it, and you can see how, as I'm coming up, is having spin on the ball. Now, if you get the result where the ball does, this is because it contact your racquet face was too close.

And so what I'm going to do is just roll my wrist back just like that. Reverse it and go up. Toss it up again and see how you can really make sure that you're creating topspin. Now, if you find the ball going to left or right, it's really about still the timing of contact. 

So you want to make sure that as you swing at contact, the strings are looking directly forward. So it's going to look like this as I throw it up and you can really see I'm pulling the racquet all the way around. And that key motion is to make sure that as you pull forward, you're rotating your shoulder and your forearm. 

The extra element that we talked about is using the body. We're not going to really focus on that right now, but how you would use your body, it's just turn here and let that energy go up through the arm and then do the exact same motion we just did. 

If you do this over and over again, you're going to really develop a strong, one-handed topspin backhand that's reliable that you can really aggressively hit and make all the time. In summary, the five elements are so crucial to make sure you have a solid one-handed backhand.

Number one, the grip the grip is so important because it adds that stability that you want to make sure you can reliably hit the ball without feeling that you have to muscle and clinch and hold on to the racquet super tight.

Not only that, having the right grip allows you to adjust the racquet face, which determines where the ball is going to go. And that's so important if you have a grip that really doesn't support this. What's going to happen is you're going to constantly either have the racket too open or too close, which is going to result in a lot of mistakes. 

Number two, The unit turn unit turn is so important. The quicker you do the unit turn, the better your time is going to be. And this is another thing that I feel like a lot of players struggle with. They wait too long before they do the unit turn, and they have trouble timing the ball. The key is making sure that I turn my shoulders as soon as I know I'm going to get a backhand to make sure I'm ready for the ball.

And number three, the racquet drop. This is a smooth movement that once you're ready to swing, you're going to drop the racquet and then initiate the hip. This really happens an explosive second, where now it sends and drives the racket to contact, which is number four. Making sure that we have contact all the way with our arm extended and that as we're pulling up to the ball, we're actually coming up on the ball with our racquet path, making sure that our contact we have the right racquet face and this is different for any situation.

If you want the racquet slightly open, you'll get a whole higher ball if it's vertical. You'll probably get a ball that's only a couple of feet over the net.

 You really need to decide what type of shot you're trying to hit, and then through that contact will go to the final fundamental, which is the follow through letting our arm decelerate coming all the way up and across and finishing.

This is really important to make sure that from the contact to the follow through that you don't over rotate, meaning that from the contact we just open all the way up at contact. My body should be looking at the ball and then, as my follow through happens, is going to then pull my body all the way open. 

So don't make a mistake that a lot of players make is which they spin all the way around trying to hit their backhand. And usually it takes the ball too far to the right. Make sure you go through and do each fundamental. The more you can do it without thinking, the better your one-handed backhand is going to be.