Leading injury expert reveals what players must ‘start demanding’ from tennis chiefs

Ewan West 28 Oct 2025 7:30 PM

Holger Rune in tears after his injury

Speaking exclusively to Tennis365, Stephen Smith, a leading athlete welfare and injury prevention expert, has argued it is crucial that tennis chiefs start collecting more injury-related data.

In addition, Smith urged tennis players to start demanding this data, and the introduction of technology seen in other sports, to avoid their careers being shortened.

Smith is the founder and CEO of Kitman Labs — the world’s leading sports science and performance intelligence company.

Leading injury expert Stephen Smith speaks to Tennis365

Responding to a question about Novak Djokovic’s injury issues, Stephen Smith explained how tennis could benefit from collecting medical information on every professional player
Smith believes governing bodies and rights holders have a responsibility to gather greater information in order to protect the sport and the athletes
Failing to collect this data will “shorten careers”, “degrade the value of competitions” and “cannibalise economic models within sport”, Smith warned

Injuries and the demands of the tennis schedule have been major talking points in recent months, with a host of players struck down or struggling with physical issues.

On the ATP Tour, seven players were forced to retire mid-match at the Shanghai Masters at the start of October, while there were five retirements or walkovers from the second round onwards at the Swiss Indoors last week.

Holger Rune is expected to be sidelined for a lengthy period after suffering a serious Achilles injury at the Stockholm Open this month.

Jack Draper, who was forced to cut short his season after the US Open due to bone bruising on his left arm, spoke out after Rune’s injury and called for changes to be made to the tour.

“Injuries are going to happen… we are pushing our bodies to do things they aren’t supposed to in elite sport,” said the Brit.

“We have so many incredible younger guys on the tour right now and I’m proud to be a part of that, however, the tour and the calendar have to adapt if any of us are gonna achieve some sort of longevity.”

Fritz, the world No 4, agreed with Draper and argued that playing conditions are contributing to the high number of recent injuries.

“Facts, also seeing more injuries and burnout now than ever before because balls, courts, conditions have slowed down a lot making the weekly grind even more physically demanding and tough on the body,” the 27-year-old American said in reply to Draper.

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Stephen Smith explains how tennis “has an opportunity to learn”

Novak Djokovic, a 38-year-old tennis icon, has increasingly had to battle his body in the latter stages of his career. The Serbian has been hampered by physical ailments frequently in 2025, including at his last competitive outing in Shanghai.

In an interview with Tennis365, Smith was asked if there was anything more Djokovic could be doing to prevent injuries.

“I think as a whole, what I would look to, rather than this being something about just Djokovic, I think where tennis as a whole has an opportunity to learn is to start collecting more data across their game,” Smith said.

“If they were collecting medical information across every single player, regardless of competition, regardless of geography, and understanding what their exposure looks like… So how many games are they involved in? How many sets are they playing?

“And then being able to look at, what are the physical demands of those games? What are the surfaces that they’re playing on and the impact that playing on grass versus playing on clay may have?

“Things like that, I think are the types of questions that we would be able to answer in that scenario, and then we’d be able to see, is there a relationship between the congestion in terms of competitions and injury? Is that exacerbated when somebody is older? Is that exacerbated when somebody is returning from injury?

“And I think by doing that, they may be able to introduce better regulations, they may be able to make better suggestions about how athletes return to play, they may be able to make better suggestions about what their training load should look like.”

What Stephen Smith feels players “have to start demanding” of tennis chiefs

Smith went on warn about the impacts of tennis not compiling data that can be used to perform injury-related research.

“I think the opportunity that exists here is for governing bodies and rights holders to say, ‘Hey, if we’re going to increase our revenue, if we’re going to bring in more competitions, we have to make sure that we protect our assets, because if we lose our best talent, those competitions are not as exciting.’

“I think there’s a responsibility for us to protect our games, protect our assets, and that means we need to start collecting more information about what’s actually happening. And what’s the impact of adding these extra games? What’s the impact of the demands that we’re placing on these athletes? How is that impacting their health? And then how can we make better recommendations?

“So, just like we’ve seen in other sports where they’ve introduced the technology to measure and monitor workload, measure and monitor injury incidents and health issues, and then to be able to start performing research on that.

“I think we have to start demanding that and players have to start demanding that of rights holders and competitions as well, because if not, we’re going to shorten careers, we’re going to degrade the value of our competitions and games and we’re essentially going to cannibalise our own economic models within sport.”