Longtime tennis analyst Steve Flink is taken with Ken Rosewall's backhand.
that's nice when they hit it to that side." Noting that the stroke was not only one of the "most beautiful strokes in tennis" but also "deadly," he could not help but quote Edberg's assessment of the match: "I was a little surprised. This time the victim was Australian Pat Rafter at the Legg Mason Classic in 1995. Ohm Youngmisuk of The Baltimore Sun recalled yet another afternoon when Edberg's backhand passed a net rusher at will. He wrote that while dismissing John McEnroe forever from Wimbledon in the 1989 semifinal, the Swede did so with a backhand return that was "so well angled that the server did not bother to chase it." The first is from Robin Finn of The New York Times. Descriptions from two analysts best sum up the range and power of this controlling element. When Stefan Edberg was an up-and-coming player in the Swedish pantheon, he was looked at as a player with a weak forehand and a few strengths.Īfter a long and successful career, Edberg will always be most known for his backhand. That "whole thing" turned out pretty well. I remember a guy once gave me a book on tennis and said 'read this, it shows you how you are supposed to play' - but you know I am a bit stubborn and did not listen, so I carried on playing my backhand with top spin and that is how the whole thing started. People kept telling me I couldn't play them top spin and had to play the shots flat. The difference with my backhand was that I was playing it with top spin which was something of a revolution. CNN quotes Borg's rebellious attitude this way: Not that he would have changed a thing about the shot. Sadly, that never quite was the case on the hard courts of New York, perhaps because he didn't have the time for that beautiful backswing. It worked on clay and grass equally, leading to multiple French and Wimbledon championships. The topspin that he was able to impart forced his opponents back behind the baseline, ever chasing. The remarkably slow takeback on his "off" wing was mesmerizing, as if one could take two entire breaths, waiting for the stroke to develop. Bjorn Borg's two-handed backhand was a looping marvel.
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