JACK DRAPER is out of the French Open with a knee injury – and is a fitness doubt for Wimbledon.
The British tennis player, 24, aggravated a tendon in his knee while playing at the Barcelona Open on April 13.
In the final stages of his last 32 clash with Argentine Tomas Martín Etcheverry, while trailing 4-1 in the deciding set, the left-hander retired hurt with the issue.
Having skipped the Madrid Masters and Italian Open, Draper has now decided to ignore the rest of the clay-court circuit of the calendar.
It means he will not attempt to play at Roland Garros in Paris – the tournament starts on Sunday, May 24.
Draper said: “My knee is on the mend and I’ve started hitting balls but, unfortunately, I have been advised not to play Roland Garros.
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“As gutting as it is to miss another Slam, the advice is not to rush straight back into playing five-set tennis on clay.
“Off the back of the arm injury I sustained last year, I’ve been restricted with my training and by giving myself the time to heal and build, I can be the player I want to be out there once again.”
Both Draper and his team, which includes Andy Murray’s former coach Jamie Delgado, feel that rushing straight back into best-of-five-set tennis, particularly on the red dirt, “isn’t the right decision”.
They want to manage his schedule to ensure he does not have any further physical relapses, especially with Wimbledon two months away.
The target is to play at the Stuttgart Open in the week of June 8, where he won the title in 2024 and was presented with a sponsors’ e-motorbike along with his £95,000 winners’ cheque.
Yet this change of itinerary will not leave him long to find form and fitness ahead of the Wimbledon Championships, which start on Monday, June 29.
Last summer, Draper reached fourth on the world rankings but then hurt his left arm while playing on clay.
Though he made the second round of Wimbledon a few weeks later, he ended up quitting the US Open in New York after an opening-round win and did not appear for the rest of the 2025 season.
Draper withdrew from the Australian Open in Melbourne in January and has only played nine matches in a stop-start 2026 campaign.
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