Stefanos Tsitsipas has reached the second week of a Grand Slam for the first time since 2024, and we’ve seen glimpses of his game that once got him to World no 3. With this comeback comes another burden though: he has a very old tradition to save.
The Greek faces eighth seed Ben Shelton on Sunday for a place in the US Open quarter-finals. Tsitsipas is the last man with a one-handed backhand remaining in the draw, following Denis Shapovalov’s fourth-round loss to Shelton on Friday night.
Since the very first Wimbledon in 1877, at least one player playing with a one-handed backhand has made the semi-finals of a men’s major, every single year, without exception. That streak has survived the transition from wooden rackets to graphite, from amateur gentlemen to touring professionals, from serve-and-volley to the modern baseline game.
However, none of the one-handers reached the final four at the Australian Open, Roland Garros, or Wimbledon this season, a reflection of how thoroughly the two-handed backhand has come to dominate the men’s game. That leaves Tsitsipas as the streak’s last realistic hope heading into the second week in New York.
We have previously written about the one-handed backhand and the few players on tour still using it, this is just another sign of this iconic shot slowly disappearing.
I’ve got a 150-year streak to save.
— Stefanos Tsitsipas (@stefanos) September 5, 2026
The subject came up again after his second-round win over Lloyd Harris, when Tsitsipas was asked about the shot’s decline, and about an unusual technique on the WTA side, where Diane Parry has taken to switching backhands mid-rally, returning serve with two hands before reverting to one when she has more time to prepare. Tsitsipas was clear that it isn’t a template he could ever adopt himself, and it would be too complicated.
A win would move Tsitsipas into the quarter-finals and keep the one-handed backhand’s 150-year semi-final streak alive for at least one more major. It would also put him one step closer to a milestone of his own: no man playing with a single-handed backhand has won a Grand Slam singles title since Dominic Thiem’s triumph at the US Open in 2020.
It won’t be easy against an in-form Shelton though and Stefanos enters as clear underdog in the odds. Who’s betting for the one-handed backhand?
