Wimbledon 2026: Why Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu withdrawing reignites discussion about the demands placed on top players

For players coming back from injuries, balancing the need for court time and the risk of aggravation is delicate.

“It’s so tough playing an individual sport. You can’t be subbed out, you just have to be dunked back in the deep end immediately,” former British player Naomi Broady said on BBC TV.

“You can’t go out and play 20 or 30 minutes and build up from there. You’re just having to play day in day out for a week.

“There’s so much load on your body. If it’s not the same injury it’s a new one cropping up.”

Both Draper and Raducanu seem to have found that out to their cost.

Draper, 24, had not played competitively for over two months before playing four matches at Eastbourne last week.

He pulled out of Wimbledon – in what would have been his first Grand Slam of the season – when bone bruising in his serving arm flared up again.

Raducanu, 23, believes overplaying at Queen’s a fortnight ago contributed to a stress fracture in her lower right leg.

The 2021 US Open champion played five matches in six days, having been out for most of the previous four months, and played a quarter-final, semi-final and final in the space of less than 30 hours because of previous rain delays.

“It’s so tough to allow time for injuries to heal and build that load up slowly when you do return,” said Broady.

“I think that’s where most of the damage is re-done when you come back too quickly. That’s why we say how relentless our sport is.”