Three racquets, three different wrists.
- Tennis loads the elbow and the wrist takes the impact of a heavy ball;
- Badminton is almost entirely a wrist and forearm sport played at speed with a light racquet;
- Squash sits between them with the added problem of a wall two feet from your swinging arm
Knowing which of those you play narrows the diagnosis considerably, because the same shoulder-height ache means different things in each.
Tennis
- Outer elbow pain, worst on the backhand and gripping: tennis elbow. Late backhands and a grip that is too small are the usual contributors. The fix is loading the tendon, not resting it
- Inner elbow pain, worst on serve and forehand: golfer’s elbow. Commoner in players with heavy topspin forehands
- Little-finger-side wrist pain on the two-handed backhand or heavy topspin: ECU tendinopathy, the classic tennis wrist injury, and it can progress to the tendon snapping out of its groove
- Deep wrist pain on rotation: TFCC injury
Badminton
A light racquet moved very fast, with extreme wrist and forearm rotation on almost every shot. The elbow gets blamed and the wrist is usually the problem.
- Back-of-wrist and forearm pain from repeated fast rotation: often intersection syndrome or an extensor overload
- Thumb-side wrist pain, particularly with a backhand grip: De Quervain’s
- Ulnar-side pain on smashes: ulnar impaction, where the two bones on that side load against each other at end range
- Finger injuries from net play and falls
Squash
- The same elbow and wrist tendon picture as tennis, with more volume because rallies are longer
- Wrist and hand impact injuries from the wall. A hand or racquet hitting the side wall at speed produces finger fractures and metacarpal fractures that get dismissed as a knock
- Falls onto the outstretched hand on a slick court: think scaphoid before sprain if the hollow at the base of the thumb is tender
In tennis the ball hits the racquet. In badminton the wrist hits the shuttle. Same sport family, different tissue paying for it.
Equipment changes worth making
- Grip size. Too small is the commonest equipment error and makes you squeeze harder for the same control. Too large restricts wrist movement. Get it measured rather than guessed
- String tension. Lower tension transmits less shock to the arm. Dropping a few pounds costs less control than people fear
- Racquet weight and balance. Head-heavy racquets increase the load through the elbow on every shot
- Replace strings and grips on schedule. Dead strings transmit more shock; slippery grips make you hold tighter
Volume and technique
Most racquet arm injuries appear within weeks of a change:
- a new racquet,
- a coaching change,
- a jump from twice to four times a week, or
- a tournament block
If your pain started in the last two months, look at what changed in the two months before it.
Late backhands, hitting behind the body, and leading with the elbow all shift load from the trunk to the arm. Those are coaching fixes, not medical ones, and they outlast any brace.
When to stop playing through it
- A snap or clunk felt on the little-finger side of the wrist during a shot
- Any numbness or tingling in the hand
- Pain after a fall, especially with tenderness at the base of the thumb
- A finger that will not fully straighten or that crosses its neighbour in a loose fist
- Pain that has stopped settling between sessions
If you also play pickleball, the pattern there is different again and worth reading separately: pickleball hand, wrist and elbow injuries.
The racquet decides which tissue takes the load. Your volume decides whether it copes.
Every article on this site is written using the Closing Window Method: name the window your condition runs on, find where you are in it, and act while it’s still open.