{"id":68124,"date":"2026-09-07T21:50:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/68124\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:50:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:50:47","slug":"us-open-2026-shelton-win-ends-149-year-grand-slam-streak-for-one-handed-backhand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/68124\/","title":{"rendered":"US Open 2026: Shelton win ends 149-year Grand Slam streak for one-handed backhand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Shelton\u2019s march into the US Open quarterfinals marked an unusual piece of tennis history on Sunday, with his victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas ending a 149-year Grand Slam streak for the one-handed backhand.<\/p>\n<p>At least one player using the stroke had reached the men\u2019s singles semifinals at a Major every year since Wimbledon in 1877. That sequence ended in 2026 after Shelton beat Tsitsipas 6-2, 6-3, 6-4 in the fourth round in New York.<\/p>\n<p>Shelton had already eliminated another prominent one-handed backhand player, Denis Shapovalov, in the third round.<\/p>\n<p>Once a dominant feature of the sport, the one-handed backhand has gradually become less common as the two-handed version has taken over in an increasingly powerful baseline game.<\/p>\n<p>Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka were among its leading modern exponents, continuing a tradition that included John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Pete Sampras, Stefan Edberg and Gustavo Kuerten.<\/p>\n<p>ALSO READ | <a href=\"https:\/\/sportstar.thehindu.com\/tennis\/carlos-alcaraz-vs-tommy-paul-us-open-2026-fourth-round-score-match-report-news\/article71437268.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Alcaraz eases into US Open 2026 quarters after win over Paul<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tsitsipas said the numbers highlighted how dramatically the game had changed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI took a look, in the 1950s I think 97% or 98% of players were playing one-handed backhands,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s literally like 2% or 3% now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Greek described it as a \u201ctraditional, classic shot\u201d and said its decline was part of a wider reduction in stylistic variety across modern tennis.<\/p>\n<p>Tsitsipas pointed to slower courts and the disappearance of contrasting approaches such as serve-and-volley tennis, counter-punching and defensive styles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat used to make tennis so interesting was you had those that played a specific way and others that played another way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>For Tsitsipas, the fading one-handed backhand is another sign of a sport increasingly converging towards a similar style of play.<\/p>\n<p>(With inputs from Reuters).<\/p>\n<p class=\"publish-time\" id=\"end-of-article\">Published on Sep 07, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Shelton\u2019s march into the US Open quarterfinals marked an unusual piece of tennis history on Sunday, with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[419,7621,775,25990,118,1326,2585,616,3829],"class_list":["post-68124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ben-shelton","tag-ben-shelton","tag-denis-shapovalov","tag-grand-slam-tennis","tag-one-handed-backhand","tag-roger-federer","tag-stan-wawrinka","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","tag-us-open-tennis","tag-us-open-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}