Former British No 1 Kyle Edmund has spoken to Tennis365 about some of the possible factors behind the high number of injuries in the sport.<\/p>\n
Tennis stars missing big tournaments has been an unfortunate and persistent theme on both the ATP and WTA tours in 2026.<\/p>\n
There were 18 players who withdrew from Wimbledon across both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s main draw entry lists before main draw play began.<\/p>\n
Big names like Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>, Jack Draper, Emma Raducanu<\/a>, Victoria Mboko and Lorenzo Musetti have all spent significant spells out due to injury in recent months.<\/p>\n Edmund was just 30 when he retired from tennis in August 2025 having suffered with a host of serious injury issues in the latter stages of his career.<\/p>\n In an exclusive interview with Tennis365, Edmund highlighted the increased physicality of modern tennis and the demands of the schedule.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s no doubt the game is more physical, certainly being on the tour and speaking to ex-players\u2026 the demands, the way people are moving is physical,\u201d said Edmund, who achieved a career-high ranking of world No 14<\/p>\n Exclusive: Kyle Edmund expands on his proposal for a radical rule change in tennis<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Carlos Alcaraz sparks fresh injury fears as he celebrates Spain\u2019s World Cup final win<\/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 \u201cThere\u2019s chat about the calendar, more days at the tournaments, the extended Masters events. [There\u2019s] probably less downtime between the tournaments, so you don\u2019t have time to do physical blocks to build your body up throughout the year. You\u2019re very much maintaining.<\/p>\n \u201cSo apart from the off-season, you\u2019re just maintaining throughout the year, and to maintain and do training where you\u2019re just, not trying to increase your fitness, but just cope with the demands for 11 months of the year, can be a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmund, who reached the semi-finals at the 2018 Australian Open, also suggested that the tennis balls used on the circuit could be a reason for an increase in arm and wrist injuries.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s another thing: the balls. I don\u2019t have stats with the balls, but the arm injuries, the wrist injuries\u2026 I had a wrist injury at the back end of my career. I never had any wrist injuries before\u2026 I don\u2019t what that was,\u201d said the two-time ATP Tour title winner.<\/p>\n \u201cI was obviously coming back from a knee injury, so it might\u2019ve just been I wasn\u2019t ready for the demands of playing match after match.\u201d<\/p>\n Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev, Alcaraz and Raducanu are among the players who have complained about the balls used on the tours in recent years.<\/a><\/p>\n Tennis legend Djokovic said: \u201cThat\u2019s probably the biggest difference I can notice, compared to maybe 10, 15 years ago. It\u2019s the balls.\u201d<\/p>\n In February 2025, seven-time major champion Alcaraz said: \u201cI think last year there were many injuries, many players with elbow or shoulder issues. It needs to change. I know they will change it.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery week, practically every week, we have different balls, different conditions, so it\u2019s complicated to adapt to them.\u201d<\/p>\n READ NEXT: Canadian Open withdrawal list: 6 stars out as Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu joined by Wimbledon finalist<\/a> The post Kyle Edmund speaks out about injuries after Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Emma Raducanu complained<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former British No 1 Kyle Edmund has spoken to Tennis365 about some of the possible factors behind the high number of injuries in the sport. Tennis stars missing big tournaments has been an unfortunate and persistent theme on both the ATP and WTA tours in 2026. There were 18 players who withdrew from Wimbledon across […]<\/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-2514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514","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=2514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Tennis News<\/h2>\n
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