was it always a thing that more top wta players have a more reliable bh than fh and do you know why? compared to the atp where some don't seem to have a bh at all lmao
Yeah, it's pretty much always been a thing. There's not a definitive reason why, but it's most likely some mix of:
Pretty much all women now hit with 2HBH which is naturally more reliable because you have the guidance hand.
There is likely something in here about women hitting with less RPMs than men, i.e. less "heavy" balls. I don't want to say "hard" because Sabalenka, Serena, others hit mph/kmh as fast as some of the men, but these balls are often (not always) lighter (not light - top WTA players obviously still hit very heavy balls but we're talking relative here) because there's less spin on them. It's really hard to describe what this feels like unless you have hit a ball with heavy topspin, but basically instead of coming off the ground at a pace close to the pace it hit the ground, it will "kick" and shoot off the ground sometimes faster than the approach or at least not at the same angle, sometimes a sharper one, sometimes a higher one. The ball feels heavier on your racket, like you're hitting a bowling ball sometimes if you don't time your strike right. All to say, their backhands are more equitable in rpm/speed to their forehands, so there's less advantage in preferring / running around to the forehand, so developmentally this would make sense to me? If anything, their backhands can deal more damage, so it makes sense to hone this more.
Women are better at rotating through their hips, which is important for the backhand
More women hit with what's called a bent/bent backhand [see blog post I link below to have this explained] where both arms are bent in preparation. And more women hit with a heavy wrist lag. So they're basically hitting left-handed forehands with their dominant hand there as a support, which naturally makes it just a more stable forehand. A lot of men are hitting straight/straight or bent/straight backhands so it's a bit different.
As aforementioned, men tend to run around their backhands more to hit forehands. The question here then becomes, are they less comfortable with backhands because they choose to play forehands, and this compounds over time? Not sure. Seems specious, but this has been speculated so I'm throwing it here. Partially because men to have better forehands than backhands so their preference informs what they do more, but also because men can get a lot more rpms on their forehand than backhand typically. So it's often to their advantage to use that shot. For women, the two shots probably have more equal weight/power on average. So why run around it?
Worth noting also that women are on average not as strong servers. The women's game is much less serve reliant (which changes a lot of the strategy actually but that's a different post). Because of this, you can't rely on a serve to cover a weak backhand the same way you can in the men's game with a serve and serve+1. Also a specious speculation but all I'm doing here is speculating so
Honestly anon, there's no good consensus on why this is besides some mix of technique combined with game differences that have created preference disparities -> comfort/reliability disparities. Could also be accredited to the weight development programs put on different shots (see: Czech men's backhands are very good!). I sadly do not have a firm answer for you, but the reliability note is interesting because theoretically speaking while the backhand should be more equal in impact to the forehand in the women's game, there's no reason for the disparity in reliability as much as power in the mens.... much to consider. If anyone has more concrete info do let me know!
[Post on types of two-handed backhands that I had to get from archive.ph cause its GONE from the original site but it has images which is useful for what I mean here: link.]
prguitarman
ellievsbear
amandla
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
discoholicmusic
