Alcaraz began the year by winning his first Australian Open title and becoming the youngest man to complete the career Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
He would have been looking to kick on further in 2026, but will now miss the entire grass court season along with the majority of the clay court swing.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz had been set to play at Queen’s, where he is a two-time winner, before Wimbledon begins on 29 June.<\/p>\n
He is now set to lose even more ground in the rankings to Italy’s Sinner, who replaced him as world number one last month and has won the past six Masters 1,000 tournaments, including three in the past five weeks.<\/p>\n
The past nine men’s major singles titles have been split between Alcaraz and Sinner, with the Spaniard winning five of them.<\/p>\n
Alcaraz’s withdrawal from Wimbledon simultaneously opens up the draw and boosts Sinner’s title hopes, given his recent dominance on the ATP Tour.<\/p>\n
However, the 24-year-old Italian has said he will not play any grass court events in the build up to Wimbledon after a draining few months.<\/p>\n
Wrist injuries are notoriously problematic for tennis players, especially if not managed correctly, and Alcaraz previously said he did not want to do further harm for “future tournaments”.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Laureus Awards in April before announcing his decision to withdraw from the French Open, he said: “I have a very long career ahead of me, with many years still to come. <\/p>\n
“Forcing things at this Roland Garros could really harm me for future tournaments.”<\/p>\n
Former US Open champion Dominic Thiem retired at the end of 2024 after his career was derailed by a wrist injury, while Juan Martin del Potro was also plagued by a wrist problem after winning his sole major at the 2009 US Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alcaraz began the year by winning his first Australian Open title and becoming the youngest man to complete…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-681344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}