Saw this article in another forum,hence the date.I thought it would be interesting for all.Injury on a single backhand are common,as we are aware of Tennis Elbow.On two-handers well this is news to me,as this article explains.

Breaking point for double handers
Barry Flatman
September 16, 2006
EVOLUTION always takes its toll. As long as tennis has been played, the joints most susceptible to injury have been the shoulder, elbow and wrist of the racquet arm, but changing techniques and developments in technology have produced a worryingly persistent new problem.
The high incidence of players using the double-handed backhand, along with the increasing demand for power and less forgiving racquets, means more players on both tours suffer wrist injuries to their other arm.

Venus Williams contested only four tournaments in the first six months of 2006 and has been a spectator since Wimbledon because of tendonitis in her left wrist.

Two days before the start of this year's US Open, 1998 winner Lindsay Davenport was forced to retire during the final of the warm-up event in New Haven with a similar complaint. Davenport had endured two previous lay-offs for a similar problem and was forced to adapt her technique.

Only months before winning her first Grand Slam a year ago, Kim Clijsters faced the possibility of her career being brought to a premature end by chronic problems with her left wrist.

The men have also suffered. Marat Safin's progress after winning in New York in 2000 at the age of 20 was hampered by problems in his left wrist.

Mardy Fish, a silver medallist at the Athens Olympics, has required two operations.

Andy Murray employs a similar technique to Safin and Fish, and the concerns are obvious.

"I am not surprised all these injuries happen after seeing the sort of torque and pressure that is put on the other wrist," Murray's former coach Mark Petchey said.

"I was brought up to play a single-handed backhand and you played through the ball in one sweeping movement. But with the double-hander nowadays, particularly when the player is looking to hit the ball cross-court, there is a pivot at the end of the stroke that can be excruciating to watch.

"The wrist twists and contorts itself, so when the impact of the ball is not quite sweet, it can be very painful."

Single-handed backhanders are a rarity. Only five figure in the top 20 on the ATP Tour, and just three in the leading 20 women on the WTA Tour.

Numbers are even more emphatic in junior circles. Just a handful of players in the boys and girls singles events at New York employed single-handed backhands.

"It's just the way players have been taught to play over the past 25 years," former Wimbledon champion Pat Cash said.

"With the increased size of racquets, children could not control the ball with a single-handed backhand, and once they get into the habit of playing double-fisted, few want to change. There are exceptions, but by and large double-fisted is the norm.

"Because the new synthetic strings are less forgiving, the balls are generally heavier and power is all-important, these injuries are always going to happen."

The double-handed backhand is not new. Australians Vivian McGrath and John Bromwich pioneered the technique in the 1930s, but it was Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors who proved that it could win the biggest prizes during the 1970s.

ATP head physician David Dines said: "The wrist has become vulnerable because of the difference in stroke production at all levels. The problem with taking this upward rotational torque is that the wrist flexes and extends, but also rotates.

"These injuries occur on the outside of the wrist and involve a complex matrix of tendons, casings and cartilage. They are caused by acute trauma from mis-hits or joint-jarring returns, not from repetitive stress. Sometimes they require surgery and the recovery can involve up to eight weeks of immobilisation."

The Sunday Times

An interesting article, but in a sense irrelevant. The way I look at it is, that players have to practice and to play to the limits of their physical ability - it's the only way they can compete with their peers who are also doing the same. It's modern tennis - and there are always going to be a large number of players injured because of the physical demands of the sport (and they can cut back the playing calendar as much as they want and it will make little difference). So however injury friendly the equipment, or courts, etc., are, is in a sense not that important as a player is still going to practice and play to the edge of physical breakdown.

In fact what really surprises me is how few wrist, arm, shoulder and back injuries there are (it's those bits of my body that take the most punishment !). I reason it out (and it's still just a hypothesis) by assuming that it's only players who are less susceptible to those injuries that can possibly make it to the pro circuit - ie. a type of Darwinian selection. I know that even if I had had the talent, and started early enough in life - there's no way I could have become anywhere near a pro - my body simply couldn't have taken it.

But the article is interesting in that it explains the wrist injuries which occur to a two-hander's supporting arm. I would otherwise, being a one-hander, find it difficult to understand, or have sympathy with ...