Backhand Grips — Technical Reference
I get asked this a lot: "Which backhand grip should I use?" And my honest answer is: it depends on what you're willing to trade away, because grip choice on the backhand isn't interchangeable. It shapes your contact geometry, your racket face angle, how you handle high balls, the load on your elbow, and even how easily you transition to net play. Pick one, and you're picking all of those consequences together.
If You're Playing One-Handed
Eastern backhand grip — index knuckle on bevel 1, the top of the handle when held vertically — is the classic choice, and it's the one modern coaching leans toward as a starting point. Federer, Wawrinka, Thiem all played from here. The face sits slightly closed at contact, which gives you both flat drives and moderate topspin, and there's a stability to it — like a karate-chop alignment leading the motion. You get balanced power and spin, easy transitions to net, and real stability on high balls. Where it comes up short: it won't generate the extreme topspin you'd get from a more severe grip on very high bounces, and very low balls can give you trouble compared to those grips. Worth knowing — nobody on tour right now plays a topspin one-handed backhand from Continental. That door's basically closed.
Semi-Western backhand — knuckle on bevel 8, well under the handle for a right-hander — tilts your face down at contact, and that buys you extra topspin with contact higher in front of you. You'll see this more from clay-courters and players with real shoulder strength. The cost: you give up flat power, low balls get genuinely difficult, and you'll need strong arms and shoulders to make this work. It also asks more of you when you transition to net.
Continental — knuckle at 12 o'clock, straight on top — almost nobody uses this for topspin backhands anymore. It keeps your face very open, which forces your wrist into extension to generate topspin, and that makes handling high balls aggressively very hard. Where Continental earns its place is slice, underspin, defensive shots, and approach shots — and of course, volleys.
If You're Playing Two-Handed
Your bottom hand — the dominant one — usually sits in an Eastern forehand grip or Continental, often matching whatever grip you already use on your forehand. Makes sense: your left hand (if you're right-handed) stays on the racket longer through the swing, so most players just wait in their forehand grip.
Your top hand, though, is doing real work. It sits in an Eastern forehand grip relative to its own orientation — thumb and index finger forming a V on the top bevel. That's your strongest forehand-equivalent position for that hand, and it's what lets your non-dominant hand act as the real engine of the stroke, not just a passenger.
The Injury Angle — Worth Taking Seriously
If you're playing one-handed, an Eastern grip genuinely reduces stress on your elbow, because the slightly more open face stabilizes your wrist and avoids extreme flexion at contact. That's a documented way to protect against tennis elbow. Continental, when used for topspin on a one-hander — which forces extreme wrist flexion — puts your wrist extensors in a mechanically disadvantaged spot under impact load, and that's the principal injury mechanism at the elbow. If you're returning serve with an extreme Western forehand grip, you may struggle on fast serves because your palm sits too far under the handle for the level swing you need — a Semi-Western compromise tends to serve you better there.
At the Net, Everything Simplifies to Continental
Once you're at net, there's no time for grip changes — the ball's coming too fast and your position is shifting too quickly. Continental becomes the grip that lets you volley forehand and backhand from the same hand position, holds your face at a consistent slightly-open angle without manual adjustment, and eliminates the roughly 150 millisecond cost of changing grips inside a 400 millisecond exchange window. If you're playing Semi-Western at the baseline and try to volley with it, your forehand volley will hold up fine — your backhand volley won't.
Related reading: Two-Handed Backhand (2HBH), Tennis Elbow (Lateral Epicondylitis)