The Rise of the Twoey: How the Two-Handed Backhand Conquered Pickleball

If you watched pro pickleball in 2022, you’d see a sport dominated by continental grips and one-handed backhands. Slice dinks, punch volleys, wristy flicks — all single-handed, all the time. The two-handed backhand was a curiosity. A tennis holdover. Something Anna Leigh Waters did that made commentators say “interesting technique” before moving on.

Fast forward to 2026, and the script has completely flipped. You can now count the PPA pros who don’t use the twoey on one hand. It’s not a trend anymore. It’s the new standard.

So what happened? And more importantly — should you be switching?

From Novelty to Necessity

The two-handed backhand’s rise in pickleball mirrors what happened in tennis decades ago, but on a dramatically compressed timeline. In tennis, the transition from one-hand to two-hand dominance took roughly 20 years. In pickleball, it took about three.

The early adopters were mostly young players with tennis backgrounds. Anna Leigh Waters made it famous, using her two-handed backhand as a weapon — not just a defensive tool, but an aggressive roll that could generate heavy topspin from the kitchen line. People noticed, but the conventional wisdom held: one hand gives you more reach, more touch, and more deception at the net. Why would you give that up?

Then Quang Duong showed everyone why.

The Quang Duong Moment

If there’s a single inflection point in the twoey’s takeover, it’s watching Quang Duong’s two-handed backhand dink. Most players who experimented with two hands on the backhand used it for drives and counters but switched back to one hand for soft game situations. Duong didn’t.

His two-handed dink wasn’t the careful, placement-oriented shot everyone expected. It was an aggressive roll — almost a mini passing shot — with topspin that kicked up off the court and forced opponents into uncomfortable positions. It was simultaneously controlled and offensive, which broke the mental model most players had about what a dink could be.

After that, the floodgates opened. Pros who’d been skeptical started working the twoey into their games. Within a season, it went from “interesting option” to “competitive requirement.”

Why the Twoey Works So Well in Pickleball

The two-handed backhand isn’t just a tennis import that happens to work on a smaller court. There are specific reasons it thrives in pickleball:

Stability Against Speed-Ups

Modern pickleball is faster than ever. Paddles are hotter, hand battles are more intense, and the ball is coming at you with more pace than it did even two years ago. Two hands on the paddle gives you a more stable platform to absorb and redirect speed-ups. When someone fires a ball at your backhand hip in a firefight, that second hand is the difference between a clean counter and a paddle flip into the net.

Topspin Generation

The two-handed backhand lets you engage your core, hips, and legs — the big muscle groups — rather than relying on wrist and forearm alone. This means more consistent topspin with less effort. At the kitchen line, that translates to dinks that dip sharply over the net and kicks that bounce up into your opponent’s body.

Disguise and Deception

Here’s the counterintuitive part. The old argument was that one hand offered more deception. But the twoey actually hides your intentions better in one critical area: the speed-up. With two hands, the preparation for a roll dink and a speed-up look nearly identical. Your opponent has to wait longer to read the shot, which buys you precious milliseconds.

Reduced Injury Risk

Your forearm is doing less work when the second hand is sharing the load. For a sport where tennis elbow and wrist strain are epidemic — especially among rec players who play five days a week — that’s not a trivial benefit.

The Hybrid Approach: What the Best Players Actually Do

Here’s the thing that gets lost in the “twoey revolution” hype: almost no one plays exclusively two-handed anymore. The modern approach is hybrid.

The best players in 2026 use two hands for:

Backhand drives and counters — maximum stability and power
Speed-ups from the kitchen — disguise and pop
Roll dinks — topspin and consistency
Resets under pressure — that extra hand absorbs pace

But they switch to one hand for:

Wide reach shots — when you’re stretched out, two hands physically can’t get there
Soft angle dinks — sometimes you need that extra few inches of reach to go cross-court
Backhand volleys at full extension — again, reach is king
Drop shots from the transition zone — touch and feel sometimes favor one hand

Ben Johns is the perfect example. He’ll play cat-and-mouse at the kitchen with one hand, looking like a classic dinker, then snap to two hands for an explosive speed-up that his opponent never saw coming. The switch itself becomes a weapon.

Should You Add It to Your Game?

Okay, so the pros are all doing it. But you’re a 3.8 who plays Tuesday/Thursday mornings at the rec center. Is it worth the investment?

Short answer: Probably yes, but don’t try to overhaul your game overnight.

Start here: Next time you’re in a hand battle and the ball comes to your backhand, try getting your off-hand on the paddle. Don’t worry about technique — just feel the added stability. Most players immediately notice they can absorb pace better and redirect the ball more cleanly.

Then add this: Practice two-handed backhand dinks in drilling sessions. Focus on rolling the ball with topspin rather than pushing it flat. The motion should feel like a small windshield wiper — paddle face closing over the ball as you brush up and across.

The key cues:

Your non-dominant hand does most of the work — grip it tighter than your paddle hand
Engage your core and hips, not just your arms
Keep your elbows relatively close to your body (think compact, not sweeping)
Follow through toward your target, not up to the sky

Don’t force it for everything. You’ll lose reach. That wide backhand dink that you currently stretch for with one hand? Keep doing that one-handed. The twoey is an addition to your toolbox, not a replacement for everything in it.

The One-Hander Isn’t Dead (Yet)

For all the twoey hype, there’s still a place for the one-handed backhand — especially at the recreational level where hand battles are less intense and court coverage matters more than raw stability. If you’re a 3.0-3.5 player who rarely faces true speed-up exchanges, a solid one-handed backhand with good placement will serve you well.

But if you’re pushing into 4.0+ territory, where the pace picks up and firefights at the kitchen become the norm? You’re bringing a knife to a gunfight with only one hand on the paddle.

The twoey isn’t just a technique trend. It’s an adaptation to how pickleball is actually being played in 2026 — faster, more aggressive, and with less margin for error at the net. The players who figured that out early are the ones standing on podiums. The rest of us are catching up.

Time to get your other hand involved.