NEW YORK — Players will tell you that being a left-hander in tennis is considered a significant advantage. The angle that lefties can create serving to the right-hander’s backhand on the ad-court is almost mythical in its effectiveness.
That was clearly in Toni Nadal’s mind when he famously suggested that his nephew Rafael Nadal play left-handed. Nadal is naturally right-handed. But throughout his illustrious tennis career, he was a lefty.
World No. 5 Jack Draper grew up idolizing Nadal and is one of a number of players who are right-handed but play left-handed.
“I write right-handed, I kick a ball right-footed, I do everything right-handed,” Draper said in Indian Wells, California, this year. “When I was younger, I used to hit on a wall, and I just picked up with the left hand. That’s the way I have always done it. I could never throw with my left hand until I was about 15. I had to really work on it, which is weird because of my serve. I don’t know, I’m just a weird guy.”
Three-time Grand Slam winner Angelique Kerber also did everything else right-handed but played tennis with her left. Cam Norrie, who played Novak Djokovic in the US Open third round Friday, has as well.
But some players who could have been left-handed ended up playing with their right, including the American Tommy Paul, who lost in the third round Saturday night.
“It’s kind of weird,” Paul told reporters at the US Open. “I’m all messed up. I write left-handed, I eat left-handed, brush my teeth left-handed. But I play all my sports right-handed, and I kick right-footed. I wish I had [played left-handed], it would have been nice.
“I’m so bummed about that. I guess when they handed me a racket, I just grabbed it in my right hand. My mom is the same. My mom plays all her sports righty and writes lefty. My brother’s fully lefty, and my sister’s fully righty. So we’re all over the place.” When told Draper was right-handed but played left-handed, he added: “I wish I was like that.”
From 10% to 12% of the world’s population is left-handed, including 11 of the top 100 male players and just seven of the top 100 women.
Some players are ambidextrous, such as Maria Sharapova, the five-time major winner, who used to hit some shots left-handed when pushed out of position. As a young teen, Sharapova even experimented with playing left-handed properly, but she eventually went back to right-handed. Or Marion Bartoli, who does most things left-handed but served right-handed and hit the ball with two hands on both sides.
Leylah Fernandez, the Canadian who finished runner-up at the US Open in 2021, could have been either left or right-handed. “I’m able to do a couple of things with my right hand,” she said in New York. “I much prefer to throw a baseball with my right hand and sign with my right hand, but I write essays with my left hand. I’m a little weird like that. It’s just whatever comes naturally to me. Tennis was always left-handed.”
Other players, rather surprisingly, were left-handed in most things but chose to play tennis with their right-hand. Maureen Connolly was encouraged by her coach to switch from left to right, while Australians Ken Rosewall and Margaret Court were encouraged to play right-handed by their respective fathers.
It didn’t hurt them; Connolly won nine slams in the 1950s when tennis was officially still amateur; Rosewall won eight singles majors and Court won 24, putting her joint-top of the all-time list alongside Djokovic.
When Borna Coric, the Croatian player, first went to play tennis, his father told the coach that he was doing everything with his left hand. But when he was asked to pick up the racket, Coric surprised his father.
“I did it with my right, unfortunately,” Coric told Tennis Majors. Spaniards Carlos Moya and Paula Badosa are both left-handers in life but right-handed on the court, with Badosa once telling Tennis Channel that “maybe I would have been a better player if I’d been a lefty.”
And sometimes players switch for other reasons.
Britain’s Roger Taylor, a left-handed serve-and-volley expert who reached the semifinals of Wimbledon three times in the 1960s and 1970s, suffered shoulder problems late in life and learned how to serve right-handed to carry on playing in senior events.
