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    The Most Beautiful Stroke in Tennis

    The value of the single-handed backhand lay not in a player’s strength but in his creativity.
    by Thomas Chatterton Williams Jun 04, 2024 5 minutes
    Source: Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Stephane Cardinale / Corbis / Getty.

    For my 34th birthday, in 2015, I received two tickets to the men’s quarterfinal of the French Open. I’m a Rafael Nadal loyalist, and I hoped to cheer for the King of Clay. I ended up seeing the Swiss-on-Swiss pairing of Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka. This turned out to be a mercy, because I missed seeing Novak Djokovic become only the second man ever to defeat Nadal at Roland-Garros, and was treated instead to some of the most beautiful groundstrokes I have ever seen.

    Wawrinka, who would go on to upset Djokovic in the final, was playing the best tennis of his life, stretching the court to open up Pythagorean angles. What struck me most about that match, other than the straight-set ease with which Wawrinka subdued a, which led to a number of exquisite backhand rallies the likes of which a contemporary fan almost never gets to enjoy.

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