Injuries are already tearing into the US Open, and the tournament has not even started. Less than 24 hours after Jannik Sinner pulled out, Jack Draper has followed him through the exit door. For the Brit, this one hurts even more. His withdrawal means he will go through the entire 2026 season without playing a single Grand Slam match.

Draper needs more time to recover from his injury, referring to the long-running bone bruise in his left arm, his dominant serving side, that has now plagued him for roughly 15 months. The withdrawal also marks the end of his planned mixed doubles run with Jessica Pegula, although the match-up was already uncertain as he had not received a wild card and in order to compete in the main draw he would have to go through the qualification rounds which run parallel with the mixed doubles event. 

The problem dates back to last year’s clay season, when Draper first started feeling weakness and discomfort in his left arm while hitting forehands and serving. He kept playing through it, but the pain gradually worsened and became much more serious during the grass swing.

“I felt like my arm was shutting down a little bit when I was hitting forehands—and on the serve, as well,” he said.

After Wimbledon, tests finally revealed bone stress and bone bruising in the humerus of his left arm, his dominant serving side. Doctors warned that continuing to play could turn it into a far more serious problem, so Draper shut things down. He stopped serving for about a month, stayed away from groundstrokes for roughly two and a half weeks, and then slowly rebuilt his workload.

That forced him to skip the Masters events in Montreal and Cincinnati before attempting a comeback at the 2025 US Open. Even then, the arm was not completely pain-free.

Although the bone had largely healed, Draper was still dealing with discomfort and even wore a compression sleeve in practice while trying to manage the issue. He managed to win his opening singles match and reached the mixed doubles semifinals with Jessica Pegula, but the comeback did not last. The pain flared again and forced him out of the tournament.

Draper is hardly the first top player to learn how quickly one injury can swallow an entire career.

• Dominic Thiem was world No. 3 and a US Open champion when a wrist injury wiped out nine months of his career in 2021. His return was brutal, with six straight tour-level losses and a ranking collapse to No. 352 before he slowly fought his way back.
• Juan Martín del Potro endured an even crueler version of the same cycle. The former US Open champion underwent four wrist surgeries between 2010 and 2015, then four more surgeries on his right knee between 2019 and 2021, spending years bouncing between comeback attempts and rehabilitation.
• Fellow Brit Kyle Edmund knows that frustration too. Once ranked No. 14 and an Australian Open semifinalist, Edmund struggled with a left knee injury for years and underwent three surgeries between November 2020 and May 2022 before eventually retiring in 2025.

The names and injuries are different, but the pattern is always the same. Months disappear, rankings collapse, confidence takes a hit, and every comeback becomes another gamble on whether the body will hold up.

Draper is only 24, but he is already caught in that same cycle. By the Australian Open this year, another comeback had collapsed before it even began. He pulled out of Melbourne entirely and admitted the setback was “by far, the most difficult, the most challenging, the most complex” of his career.

There was a short comeback in February, followed by a separate knee injury in April, which brought a retirement in Barcelona, and another two-month layoff that threw away the French Open. He came back for Wimbledon preparations, reaching the semi-final in Eastbourne, only to suffer the same injury to the arm and miss the home Grand Slam.

Days before withdrawing from the Washington Open, Draper said he was “feeling physically good,” only to pull out again, later posting on Instagram, “These last months have felt like nothing but adversity and setbacks.”

And that is really the story of his last 15 months. Every time Draper has looked close to turning the corner, another setback has dragged him right back to the same place.

Draper’s 15-Month injury nightmare shows no sign of ending

Jack Draper’s comeback has been a mess. He returned for the North American hard-court swing, broke down in tears after losing his opener to Terence Atmane in Montreal, then followed it with a straight-sets loss to Martin Landaluce in Cincinnati. By then, the issue was bigger than results. Draper was openly admitting that the player who once looked ready to challenge the best had almost disappeared.

“The way I’m usually able to fight for every ball and conduct myself, it’s just missing,” he said. “The level of my fall from where I was last year and the amount of things that I’m having to change in my tennis… the mountain seems very, very big.”

Draper reached a career-high ranking of world No. 4 in June 2025, on the back of strong results such as reaching the US Open semifinals in 2024, winning the Indian Wells Masters title, and reaching the final in Madrid. Since then, he has fallen to No. 143 in the rankings, a steep decline that has left him without a wildcard for the majors, let alone a seed in any tournaments. 

Former player Ryan Harrison summed up the mood around Draper’s latest setback bluntly. “It’s 11 months, and it’s non-stop,” he said. “The US Open is a Grand Slam where he has reached the semi-finals. He has challenged all of the very best in the world, so I feel very sad for him.”

While Draper and Sinner are out, Carlos Alcaraz is heading the other way. The defending champion is set to return after four months on the sidelines with a wrist injury. Holger Rune has not been as lucky. The 23-year-old is still recovering from the Achilles rupture he suffered last October and remains out of the US Open, despite recently being spotted practicing with Alcaraz in Murcia. Alcaraz made it back in time. Rune did not.

There is no indication of when the Brit can hit the tennis courts again, as he simply needs to allow his body the time to recover.