Looking back to the eve of Wimbledon, Jack Draper can now appear to have prophetic powers. “I think it's pretty worrying, the state of men's tennis, especially right now,” the former British No 1 said. “The amount of injuries, especially young players.”
The following afternoon, a “devastated” Draper pulled out of Wimbledon after suffering a sudden relapse of the arm injury that stopped his career “in its tracks” last year. "There have been a lot of painful moments in the last 12 months but this one is definitely the absolute worst,” the 24-year-old said in a statement.
Brutal, but if you look back at last year’s Wimbledon, you would find that Draper is not alone. Including the former world No 4, four of the top-10 in the men’s draw are currently sidelined from the tour due to injuries. The most notable is two-time Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, sidelined due to his wrist, but the list also includes Lorenzo Musetti, last year’s semi-finalist, and Holger Rune, a former quarter-finalist.
Rune, 23, has been out since last October after tearing his Achilles tendon during a semi-final at the Nordic Open in Stockholm. It was a match that may not have attracted much attention if it was not for the horrible sound of Rune’s Achilles popping while he chased down a ball. “We have so many incredible younger guys on the tour right now and I’m proud to be apart of that,” said Draper, who was nursing his own left arm injury at the time. “However, the tour and the calendar have to adapt if any of us are gonna achieve some sort of longevity…"
Eight months later, Draper could see that not much had changed, and that was before he became the 11th withdrawal from the men’s side of the draw. The increasingly physical nature of the game and the intensity of the tennis calendar, combined with faster courts and the different conditions of the balls on tour, are all reasons why players are struggling to deal with the load.
“When I looked at the draws for the weeks when I was out, everything is shoulder, arm, wrist,” Draper said. “Whether that's the quality of the balls... I don't think there's more matches nowadays and stuff. I think definitely the way athletes are getting better and hitting the ball harder and moving better.”
The players should be at their physical peak at this point of the year. The tennis season is long, but discussions around players reaching burnout usually happened in October - as they did last year at around the time of Rune’s injury and another “brutal” week at the Shanghai Masters where many leading names appeared to be running on fumes.
Then, during the off-season, Draper was highly critical of the 12-day Masters events that are now a common across the tour. He called the tournaments “lonely” and said they were adding to the strain players were under. The extended days weren’t necessarily adding more matches, but they were adding more days away, more training, with less time to get away from it all.
“I think it's my opinion they need to really take a close look at what we're doing on tour,” Draper also said in his pre-Wimbledon media appearance. “Definitely the state of the Masters 1000s, the 12-day events. I was privy to those conversations when I was a top-10 player. Now I'm not, I don't care as much about what I say. I think the tournaments are going to suffer a lot if not much changes. I think it's a really important topic. I hope that as time goes on things do change.”
As Draper eluded to, injuries are a wider problem in the sport. But they are also, curiously, a very British issue as well. Draper’s withdrawal came just hours after the confirmation that Emma Raducanu would also be missing her home grand slam after a “niggle” in her lower-right leg developed into a “stress fracture”. Sonay Kartal has been sidelined since March, while Cameron Norrie and Jacob Fearnley were both hampered by rib injuries during the clay-court season. “I don't necessarily think there's one reason for all," Katie Boulter told the BBC last month. “Everyone is an individual case. It just seems to be that everything has happened at once."
But at Wimbledon, the absence of Draper and Raducanu hit harder than anywhere else. That’s the reason the opening day of the Championships has been branded “miserable Monday”. Tennis, though, faces its own reckoning, according to Debbie Jevans, chair of the All England Club.
“As we look to the future, it is clear that we need to continue working to improve the whole of the sport,” Jevans said two weeks ago in her pre-Wimbledon briefing. “We're not just talking about incremental changes around the edges, but major improvements that address governance, strengthen the calendar, and lengthen the off-season. That's to serve both the players and the fans and respond to player concerns about burnout and the number of tournaments that they play.”
In tennis, though, change takes time. Many point to the fact that tennis essentially having seven governing bodies, in the ATP, WTA, the newly branded World Tennis and the four historic grand slam events in Wimbledon, Roland Garros, the Australian Open and the US Open, mean getting everyone around the same table is challenging enough, especially when leading players are staging direct action over prize money.
Now the leading players and representatives have called a truce in their stand-off with the All England Club over prize money, Wimbledon must take the chance to address what is an increasingly prominent issue.
