Samenvatting

Injuries are a huge setback for tennis players. Injury prevention needs a detailed understanding of tennis injury epidemiology. Lower extremity injuries occur about equal to or more often than upper extremity injuries in tennis. Although studies have described the incidence rate of injuries across the whole body per court surface, there is a lack of knowledge on the influence of the court surface on lower limb injury rates and the anatomical location of the injuries.

The primary goal of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between tennis court surfaces and lower limb injuries. A secondary aim is to examine whether the location of lower extremity injuries varies depending on the court surface.

The gathered data suggests that the court surface might influence the occurrence of lower extremity injuries. Based on the analysis, lower extremity injuries seem to occur most often on grass court, followed by clay court and hard court. According to the analysis of injury locations on hard court, the anatomical regions with the highest frequency of injuries seem to be the knee, the foot/toe area, and the ankle. The review suggests that the characteristics of the different court surfaces, such as reaction time, physical exertion and physiological response may contribute to the incidence of lower limb injuries. It highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between court surface and lower limb injuries. Future research should focus on female and recreational tennis players while using standardized injury incidence metrics.