Can You Hit The Ball With Two Hands In Squash?

Let me start by saying that as a coach, I feel it’s fine to allow pupils freedom to try and use different swing techniques. Humans are not machines and prescribing exactly how a player must swing can be counterproductive. There are limits though, because outside of that limit the chance of eventually creating something powerful, accurate AND consistent is very small.

Peter Marshall hitting the ball using two hands

The player in the featured photograph is called ex-professional squash player called Peter Marshall and as you can see he is using two hands to prepare to hit the ball. Follow the link if you are interested to learn more about him, but I will tell you that he reached world number 2, behind Jansher Khan.

Trust me, I know what I am doing

Coaches and advisors had been trying to get him to change from two to one hand for years, some hoping he would “grow out of it” as he got older. And he is the key to peter’s use of two hands: when he was young, he was quite small for his age and the racket was big. It’s not unusual for small children to hold the racket in two hands when they first start playing, but as they get older then get stronger and stop using both hands.

Unless you are a small child, which I will assume you aren’t, there really isn’t any benefit to using two hands. You can’t reach further, you can’t hit the ball more consistently, you can’t hit the ball harder. It’s often used due to a lack of good technique which may be caused by not having coaching or by playing completely isolated from experience players. Of course, you see it all the time in tennis and you can hit the ball harder with two hands in tennis, but the swing is different, the rackets are heavier, the ball is heavier. One thing to notice is that even tennis players use one hand when stretching for the ball and squash players do a lot of stretching!

Of course, tennis is nothing like squash. Well, it is a little

There are some people who seem to use two hands, but it’s only in the preparation and then only on the backhand. Peter, on the other hand, used both hands on forehand and backhand AND at the point of contact. But again, when stretching to his limit he would have to use one hand.

If you want to use two hands and can hit good consistent shots with it, that’s great. Would I advise you to develop a better single-handed swing? Yes, because I believe that out of 100 people who use two hands, 99 would be better players with one. Are you that 1 out of a 100? I doubt it.

Final Thoughts

Hitting with two hands can be fun sometimes, but it will limit you in the back corners.