Leading injury prevention and athlete welfare expert Stephen Smith has spoken to Tennis365 about the wrist injury that ended Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s clay-court season.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz has not played since suffering a right wrist injury in his first round win over Otto Virtanen at the Barcelona Open on 14 April.<\/p>\n
The seven-time Grand Slam winner pulled out before his second round match in Barcelona and said the injury was \u201cmore serious than we all expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days later, Alcaraz<\/a> withdrew from the Madrid Masters, and a week after that, he ruled himself out of both the Italian Open and the French Open.<\/p>\n It has been reported that the injury\u00a0Alcaraz is dealing with is an inflamed tendon sheath in his wrist.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Kitman Labs \u2014 the world\u2019s leading sports science and performance intelligence company \u2014 has shed light on how serious tendon sheath injuries can be.<\/p>\n \u201cIt depends on how much damage had occurred through something like that,\u201d Smith said in an exclusive interview with Tennis365. \u201cIf it\u2019s the tendon sheath, that\u2019s generally indicative of the fact that it\u2019s not a major issue.<\/p>\n Why Alcaraz & Sinner have \u2018big opportunity to get closer to Djokovic, Nadal, Federer\u2019 \u2013 Juan Martin Del Potro<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Juan Martin del Potro and Gabriela Sabatini gives their verdict on Jack Draper\u2019s potential<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a> for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf it was the tendon itself, that can be much more of a problem. But the sheath is basically the sleeve that surrounds it; that generally is indicative of a minor level of inflammation, or irritation, or strain.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s a tendon itself, you could have some level of partial tear. That can be quite concerning in a tendon, especially in a tennis player because those tendons are extremely small, there\u2019s a lot of pressure and stress that goes through them, they\u2019re obviously important for every single stroke. And that could be much more debilitating.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if it\u2019s just the sheath, [that is] generally indicative of the fact that it might be an over-stretch, might be a slight strain. A small amount of inflammation that can be dealt with quite easily.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can strap those and take some pressure off and deload around that. So, much more manageable, I would suggest.\u201d<\/p>\n Alcaraz\u2019s withdrawal from the French Open a month before the tournament\u2019s start date raised some concerns about his injury, but Smith thinks this was a wise decision.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s probably [Alcaraz] being smart, when you look at the calendar and schedule that they have to get through, I think you\u2019re probably going to see [that],\u201d Smith assessed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world of tennis is shifting slightly because of the change in calendar, change in those tournament lengths, change in number of matches that you need to commit to when you\u2019re involved in those.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that means that we\u2019re probably going to see more selective behaviour like that, because if you were playing less matches and there was more space between them, it would be easier to manage smaller [physical] conditions through that.<\/p>\n \u201cBut now, if you don\u2019t do that, and you exacerbate something, then you can have a knock-on impact of missing another two or three tournaments really quickly afterwards.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, you\u2019re probably going to see people make much smarter decisions like that now. They weren\u2019t forced to make those decisions before.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Everything Jannik Sinner said after historic Italian Open win as he gives update on fitness scare<\/a> The post Carlos Alcaraz gets encouraging verdict on his wrist injury from leading expert<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leading injury prevention and athlete welfare expert Stephen Smith has spoken to Tennis365 about the wrist injury that ended Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s clay-court season. Alcaraz has not played since suffering a right wrist injury in his first round win over Otto Virtanen at the Barcelona Open on 14 April. The seven-time Grand Slam winner pulled out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Exclusive Interviews<\/h2>\n
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