Jack Draper ruled out of French Open with knee tendon injury

Jack Draper’s knee injury has stopped the momentum of a breakthrough season just as the biggest points on clay were about to arrive. The 24-year-old Briton will miss Roland-Garros and the rest of the clay-court swing, a setback that threatens his ranking, his Wimbledon prospects and the development of a career that was only beginning to look settled again.

Draper retired in the third set of his Barcelona Open match against Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry after aggravating a tendon injury in his right knee. He then withdrew from Madrid and Rome with the same problem. Draper later said on Instagram that his knee was “on the mend” and that he had started hitting balls again, but he had been advised not to play in Paris because it would be too risky to rush back into five-set tennis on clay.

The timing is brutal. Draper had already spent much of the period since Wimbledon last year on the sidelines with a long-term left-arm injury, and since returning in February he has managed only nine matches across five events. That limited sample had still shown how high his ceiling could be. In March he beat Novak Djokovic on his way to the Indian Wells quarter-finals, and in 2025 he had already made himself a surprise force on clay by reaching the Madrid final, the Rome quarter-finals and the fourth round at Roland-Garros.

Now the ranking consequences could be severe. Draper is 28th in the world and is unable to defend significant points from Madrid, Rome and Roland-Garros. BBC Sport and Yahoo said he is likely to fall outside the top 50, while Tennis.com projected a slide beyond the top 70 as his ranking points drop away. That would be more than a statistical dip. It would put him in danger of missing a seeded place at Wimbledon, a major shift for a player trying to turn a series of injury interruptions into a steady rise.

Sky Sports reported that Draper is now a doubt for Wimbledon as well. Roland-Garros runs from 18 May to 7 June, with the main draw beginning on 24 May and the men’s singles final set for 7 June. For Draper, the next few weeks are not just about recovery. They will shape whether this season becomes the launch point of a breakthrough career or another chapter defined by the stops and starts of injury.