Carlos Alcaraz gets encouraging verdict on his wrist injury from leading expert
Leading injury prevention and athlete welfare expert Stephen Smith has spoken to Tennis365 about the wrist injury that ended Carlos Alcaraz’s 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 before his second round match in Barcelona and said the injury was “more serious than we all expected.”
Two days later, Alcaraz withdrew from the Madrid Masters, and a week after that, he ruled himself out of both the Italian Open and the French Open.
Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Kitman Labs — the world’s leading sports science and performance intelligence company — has shed light on how serious tendon sheath injuries can be.
“It depends on how much damage had occurred through something like that,” Smith said in an exclusive interview with Tennis365. “If it’s the tendon sheath, that’s generally indicative of the fact that it’s not a major issue.
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“If 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.
“If it’s 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’s a lot of pressure and stress that goes through them, they’re obviously important for every single stroke. And that could be much more debilitating.
“But if it’s 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.
“They can strap those and take some pressure off and deload around that. So, much more manageable, I would suggest.”
Alcaraz’s withdrawal from the French Open a month before the tournament’s start date raised some concerns about his injury, but Smith thinks this was a wise decision.
“That’s probably [Alcaraz] being smart, when you look at the calendar and schedule that they have to get through, I think you’re probably going to see [that],” Smith assessed.
“The 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’re involved in those.
“And that means that we’re 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.
“But now, if you don’t do that, and you exacerbate something, then you can have a knock-on impact of missing another two or three tournaments really quickly afterwards.
“So, you’re probably going to see people make much smarter decisions like that now. They weren’t forced to make those decisions before.”
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