Racquet sports safety, as researchers and governing bodies publish it.

This section is a reference to what has been published about injury and risk in five separate sports: tennis, pickleball, padel, squash and badminton. It is not a safety course. Strokes, movement and fitness are learned in person from a qualified coach, and injuries are a matter for doctors and physiotherapists; nothing on these pages replaces any of them. An injury, a blow to the eye or head, a suspected concussion or heat illness needs medical care.

How these pages are written

• Five sports, never merged. Each sport has its own governing body, rule book and research. A finding about tennis players says nothing about squash players, so every figure and rule on these pages names its sport.
• Every injury figure keeps its study. Each number is given with the study that published it, its data source, its years and the people it covered. Figures from different studies are never added together or turned into one rate, because the studies count in different ways: per 1,000 sets at Wimbledon, per 1,000 hours in a cohort, or as national estimates of hospital emergency visits.
• Emergency-department counts show trends, not risk. Much of the pickleball and senior tennis research uses NEISS, the US national injury surveillance system run by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. NEISS counts emergency-department visits only and has no figures for how many people play or for how long, so it can show how injuries change over time and what they look like, but not how likely any one player is to be hurt. Two of the research teams that use it, Weiss and colleagues and Yu and colleagues, state these limits themselves.
• Gear is not presented as prevention. No page says eyewear, shoes or any other item prevents injury. The pages report what a standard tests and what bodies and researchers say, with who says it.
• Rules are given by body, level and date. Eyewear, heat, concussion and medical rules differ between World Squash and a national body, between the ATP and a Grand Slam, and between a sanctioned tournament and a social game. Each is given with its document and date, never as one answer.
• Nothing is taught or treated. These pages contain no stroke or footwork technique, warm-ups, stretching, drills, training plans, stringing or fitting advice, first aid, treatment or rehabilitation.
• Gaps are admitted. Several governing-body websites could not be opened for the research. Anything that rests only on a search excerpt, a single news report or a secondary source is said to be unconfirmed, with what it rests on. Where something was looked for and not found, the page says it was not found, which is not the same as saying it does not exist.

The pages in this section

1. Injuries named: the injuries the research records in each sport, from ankle sprains and Achilles ruptures to wrist fractures and eye injuries, with the study that names them.
2. Tennis injury research: Wimbledon 2003 to 2012, the Australian Open 2011 to 2016, a 2025 review of high-performance players and the NEISS figures for players aged 60 and over.
3. Pickleball injury research: five NEISS studies, kept apart, from 2001 to 2024 (one known only from a search excerpt), including fractures among older players.
4. Padel, squash and badminton injury research: the 2023 padel review, the small and mostly older squash literature, and the 2025 badminton review with the Nordic Achilles studies.
5. Eye injuries and eyewear rules: the eye-injury studies, the move from ASTM F803 to ASTM F3164, ISO 18527-2, and which bodies require eyewear for whom.
6. Heat rules: the ATP's 2026 rule, the WTA rule as reported, the Australian Open Heat Stress Scale, Olympic tennis and Pickleball Canada's guidelines.
7. Concussion and medical rules: what Pickleball Canada and Squash Canada publish, USA Pickleball's protocol and the BWF's 2024 change as reported (both unconfirmed), the 2025 squash review, and cardiac events in the research.
8. Safeguarding: the ITF's 2026 policy, USTA Safe Play, the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the PSA, England Squash, the BWF and Pickleball England.
9. Anti-doping: the Tennis Anti-Doping Programme run by the ITIA, World Squash and the ITA, the FIP's 2026 WADA signature, the BWF and the pickleball bodies.
10. Court and facility safety: what the FIP Rules of Padel, the World Squash court specifications and the ITF court guidance require or recommend.

One name to know

Tennis's world governing body, the International Tennis Federation, now trades as World Tennis. Member nations voted for the change in October 2025, and the International Paralympic Committee reported the rebrand on 26 June 2026. Its 2026 rule book is still issued under the ITF name, and documents dated before 2026 say ITF, so these pages use both names. The separate International Taekwon-Do Federation also uses the letters ITF; none of its documents are used here.

Related reading

What each eyewear standard covers is set out in the equipment section on eye protection standards, and the regulator recalls found for racket-sport products are on recalls. Court shoe rules are on court shoes. The governing bodies themselves are introduced in the Learn pages, starting with what racquet sports are.