{"id":608592,"date":"2026-05-28T14:18:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/608592\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:18:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:18:24","slug":"french-open-alexander-blockx-pondering-legal-action-over-training-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/608592\/","title":{"rendered":"French Open: Alexander Blockx Pondering Legal Action Over Training Accident\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexander Blockx and his team are considering seeking compensation from the French Open after the Belgian injured his ankle whilst training on a practice court.<\/p>\n

The world No.37 was due to take on Alex de Minaur in the second round but was forced to withdraw from the match after suffering an injury leading up to the clash. Conducting a hitting session with fellow player Joao Fonseca at the Paris Jean-Bouin club, Blockx sprained his ankle after tripping over the covers located at the back of the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Announcing his withdrawal on social media, the tennis star criticised the \u2018really necessary\u2019 covers at the back of a court in a statement that has since been modified to exclude this comment. \u00a0No reason has been given as to why this was done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, during today\u2019s practice I heard a snap in my ankle while I sprained it, which is why I had to withdraw from tomorrow\u2019s match that I was really looking forward to,\u201d\u00a0he wrote in his edited statement on Instagram. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201dA lot of frustration but we move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruben Bemelmans, who coaches the 21-year-old, has confirmed they are considering seeking damages from the Grand Slam.\u00a0During an interview with The Athletic<\/a>, he also questioned the necessity for covers to be located on the ground at the back of the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor sure, there\u2019s no signs (saying) \u2018careful about covers in the back,\u2019\u201d Bemelmans commented.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre the covers necessary in Jean-Bouin? I don\u2019t think so. There should be a solution for that because the courts are very narrow. There\u2019s not much space behind the courts. So in my opinion, it shouldn\u2019t be there or there should be another solution other than putting them on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elaborating further, Bemelmans believes better solutions are needed to protect players on what he describes as \u2018very narrow\u2019 courts. Arguing that, due to the development of men\u2019s tennis, more players are returning from further behind the baseline, and therefore, they need more room during practice to work on these positions.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the day, you could defend your line and put yourself on the baseline and attack the ball there, but now it\u2019s become so physical and you need to play from the back and then try to gain your position after a few shots. But yeah, that\u2019s unfortunately what happened to Alex.\u201d\u00a0He said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blockx has risen up the rankings by almost 60 places over the past two months. At the Madrid Open, he defeated three top 20 players to reach his first masters 1000 semi-final before losing to Zverev. He then reached the third round in Rome, where he was again beaten by Zverev.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is unclear if the ankle injury will have any impact on Blockx\u2019s plans for the grass swing.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexander Blockx and his team are considering seeking compensation from the French Open after the Belgian injured his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-608592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}