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Introduction
The Australian Open is one of the four Grand Slam events in professional tennis. Epidemiological profiles of injuries at the Wimbledon and US Open Grand Slams have been conducted, 1 2 though as yet, the Australian Open profile remains to be reported. As the Australian Open is scheduled at a different time of year, on a different court surface (Plexcushion) and in a different climate to the other Grand Slams, its injury profile may differ.
The injury profiles of the Wimbledon and US Open Grand Slams suggest that elite tennis is highly injurious compared with other sports. 1 2 As context, sports like rugby and basketball have reported means of 10.5 3 and 8.5 4 injuries per 1000 training hours and athletic exposures, respectively. Injuries at Wimbledon between 2003 and 2012 resulted in a mean injury rate of 20.7 injuries per 1000 set exposures (which typically last for less than 1hour). 1 Within the Wimbledon injury rate, female players were more frequently injured than their male counterparts (23.4 vs 17.7 injuries per 1000 set exposures). Acute injuries were more prominent than chronic injuries, with the shoulder, knee and lumbar spine the most commonly injured regions. 1 At the US Open between 1994 and 2009, the mean injury rate was 48.1 injuries per 1000 match exposures. 2 Within this tournament, a higher injury incidence existed among male than female players (44.0 vs 32.2 per 1000 match exposures), which directly contrasts with Wimbledon's sex-based injury profile. 1 2 Further, lower limb injuries were 3 and 1.3 times more prominent than trunk injuries and upper limb injuries, respectively, despite similar prevalence of acute injuries as reported at Wimbledon. 1 Collectively, these data highlight the variation in the injury profile of respective Grand Slam tennis events.
Injury incidence in tennis has been described in the context of match exposures, 2 tennis hours 5 6 and per 100 tennis players. 7 These disparate methods complicate the comparison of injury rates between tennis events. Given reporting differences, a standard method of comparison would be useful. This would also assist with comparisons between sexes given that males play the best-of-five set Grand Slam singles tennis and females, the best-of-three sets. 8 For example, as described above, the mean women's and men's...