Injuries named: what the research records in each sport.

Why each sport has its own list

The research behind this page is a patchwork. Some studies count players seen by tournament doctors, some count hospital emergency visits across the United States, some ask club players to remember their injuries, and some follow a small group of juniors for years. Each records the injuries its own method can see. A list from one sport, or one study, is not a list for another, so the injuries below are grouped by sport and tied to the study that names them. Any figure given belongs only to that study and its population. Fuller figures are on the three research pages linked at the end.

Tennis

• Ankle sprains. A 2025 systematic review of high-performance players (Amor-Salamanca and colleagues, 37 studies) names the ankle sprain as the most frequent acute injury in both juniors and adults.
• Shoulder tendon problems. The same review names shoulder tendinopathy as the most frequent overuse injury in adult high-performance players.
• Lateral elbow pain ("tennis elbow"). Lateral epicondylalgia appears in the review, but its figures are baseline values from the grip-size studies in the review, not from a general count. How common it is across all players is disputed; see tennis injury research.
• Knee, shoulder and lower back injuries at a major. At Wimbledon from 2003 to 2012 (McCurdie and colleagues), the shoulder, knee and lumbar spine were common sites in both men and women, and the lower limb was the largest region.
• Falls, strains, sprains and fractures in older players. Among US players aged 60 and over seen in emergency departments from 2010 to 2019 (Weiss, Dougherty and DiMaggio, 2021), strains or sprains, fractures and internal injuries were the leading diagnoses, and most injuries came from slips, trips or falls. Senior women had higher odds of a fracture, and of a wrist fracture, than senior men.

Pickleball

• Fractures from falls. A 2024 NEISS study of pickleball fractures from 2002 to 2022 (Ghattas and colleagues) found most resulted from falls and most were in the upper limb. The radius was the bone most often broken, followed by the humerus and ulna. Most patients were over 60 and most were women.
• Strains, sprains and contusions. In the 2021 senior study (Weiss and colleagues), strains or sprains, fractures and contusions were the leading diagnoses among pickleball players aged 60 and over.
• Wrist, hip and pelvis, lower leg and head injuries. A 2025 NEISS study covering 2013 to 2022 and all ages (Yu and colleagues) found the wrist, lower trunk, lower leg and head were the most affected sites. Among patients admitted to hospital, the lower trunk, which includes the hip and pelvis, was the most common site.
• Paddle strikes in children, twisting injuries in young adults. The same study found being struck by a paddle was the most common mechanism for ages 0 to 17, and twisting or inversion for ages 18 to 34, while falls led overall.
• Eye injuries. A 2025 JAMA Ophthalmology study (Lacher, Koc and Tsui), as reported by Review of Optometry, lists injuries from cuts around the eye and corneal abrasions to retinal detachment, globe trauma, orbital fractures and hyphema. See eye injuries and eyewear rules.

Padel

• Elbow injuries. A 2023 systematic review of padel injuries (Dahmen and colleagues, eight studies) found the elbow the most frequently reported site, and lateral elbow tendinopathy the most frequently reported diagnosis.
• Knee, shoulder and lower back. These followed the elbow as the most reported sites in the same review.
• Calf and hamstring strains, ankle sprains, plantar fasciitis. These appeared in several of the reviewed studies. Achilles tendinitis appeared in only one.
• Eye contusion. One study in the review reported it; it was the review's only eye finding.

Squash

• Strains, sprains and lower-leg injuries. A 1981 telephone survey of players at two New York clubs (Berson and colleagues) found strains and sprains were more than a third of injuries, and nearly half involved the lower extremity, most often the ankle and lower leg.
• Thigh and knee injuries, and growth-related conditions in juniors. A study of 21 elite male juniors at one academy in Doha from 2009 to 2015 (Horobeanu and colleagues, 2019) found the thigh and knee most often affected, with growth-related osteochondrosis, including Osgood-Schlatter disease, the most frequent diagnosis.
• Eye injuries. Older hospital studies from Britain record eye injuries from the squash ball; see eye injuries and eyewear rules.

Badminton

• Sprains, Achilles tendon ruptures, torn ankle ligaments and fractures. These were the diagnoses among 100 badminton players treated over one year at a Danish hospital casualty ward (Hoy and colleagues, 1994).
• Achilles tendon ruptures. A study of ruptures in Oulu, Finland, from 1979 to 1994 (Leppilahti, Puranen and Orava, 1996) found badminton among the ball games most often involved. These Nordic studies are old; no recent study of badminton's share was found.
• Lower-limb and overuse injuries. A 2025 systematic review (Stepper and colleagues), as summarised by the journal's blog, found the lower extremities most often affected and overuse injuries a relevant problem.
• Eye injuries from the shuttle and the racket. A 2020 series of 85 badminton eye injuries (Yu and colleagues) recorded hyphaema, secondary glaucoma, lens subluxation and retinal detachment, most of them in doubles. See eye injuries and eyewear rules.

Heat illness

Heat illness needs medical care. The research for this site did not collect any study that counts heat illness in any of the five sports. What it did collect are the heat rules that tours and bodies apply, and a 2025 tennis review that lists hot and humid conditions among the factors it associates with injury. Those are on heat rules.

Cardiac events

Heart problems appear in the research as a separate category, not as injuries, and they need emergency medical care.

• In emergency-department counts. The 2021 senior study (Weiss and colleagues) removed cardiovascular events and fainting from its injury counts. They made up 11.1% of senior pickleball cases and 21.5% of senior tennis cases in its data.
• Sudden cardiac arrest in older adults. A 2023 study of 4,078 sudden cardiac arrests in people aged 65 and over in two US regions (Holmstrom, Chugh and colleagues, as reported by Cedars-Sinai) found 1.9% happened during or within an hour of sport or exercise, tennis among the activities named. It did not break results out by sport, so it gives no tennis figure.

More on this is on concussion and medical rules.

What these lists cannot tell you

None of these studies says how likely a given player is to be hurt. The emergency-department studies have no count of how many people play; the questionnaire studies rely on memory; the tournament studies cover only professionals at single events. They show which injuries turn up and, in some cases, how the numbers have changed. Anyone with an injury, or worried about one, needs a doctor or physiotherapist, not a list.