Paula Badosa and a quarter to prove herself: “I want to be the one from before the chaos”

Expressive as she is, Paula Badosa exhales, brings her index finger to her temple (head, head!) and seems to say to herself: thank goodness… She had everything going her way, but a slight slip could have led to a much more troublesome scenario, so she manages to keep her composure and finally closes it out. At the ninth match point, she reaches the second round in New York. An ace finally dissipates the accumulated tension: 6-1 and 6-4 (after 1h 46m) against Daria Kasatkina in a match split in two due to the previous day’s rain, which forced the suspension of the match when the Spaniard (28 years old and 87th in the world) was serving for the win. Tennis and its traps. A sport that rarely grants a respite. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, although water is a frequent recurring issue.

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Late Tuesday, Badosa had to retire to the hotel when she had half the victory in hand, with a 6-1, 5-4 and 40-40 on the scoreboard. Upon her return to the court, however, she is nervous and things don’t quite come together from the baseline. There are moments of suspense but, even so, 12 points and 10 minutes later she seals the win that sets her up against American Coco Gauff. There is no respite: this very Thursday (1.00, Movistar+) she will return to action. And the precedents are not bad at all: 5-3 in her favor. She beat the American this year in Berlin and also last year in Australia. Why such a particular good performance against the number four? “It’s a profile that has worked well for me so far, tactically I know how to play her,” she reasons.

Gauff is currently vying to dethrone number one, Aryna Sabalenka, but Badosa does not speculate: “I’m going all out… If she has that in her head, then hopefully she feels the pressure and plays worse, right? But it’s not something that worries me.” The Spaniard speaks shortly after those tense moments on court 17, the one closest to the park, the one where the smell of marijuana circulates. “The truth is it hasn’t been easy. It seemed like I had it under control because after the first break yesterday, I managed it well, but they stopped it again at a crucial moment and honestly it was a pain. I couldn’t sleep… And today I was very tense. But well, in the end I was able to turn it around,” she evaluates.

Badosa hadn’t competed since July 28, when she played her last match in Hamburg. With the results recorded throughout that month, she had already achieved her goal, arriving in New York, so she took advantage of the rest of the summer period for “a small procedure.” She says she is physically fine, but that “when I was young” she broke her nose and since the first operation didn’t go well, she decided to go through surgery a third time to correct the septum deviation and thus improve her breathing.

Add and rise

Absent a year ago, the Catalan commented before the tournament that after another season in which she couldn’t maintain continuity, her idea is to tackle the New York Grand Slam — and, really, this last quarter — to test herself once again; probably thinking about trying to reach an optimal point for 2027. Used to living in almost permanent uncertainty, deep down her greatest aspiration remains to continue feeling like a tennis player.

“You have to take into account the year I’ve had and everything that’s happened. It hasn’t been the best, let’s say… I think it’s a bit about trying to enjoy, trying to be myself again,” she said last Friday. “My goal right now is to finish the year playing as many matches as possible. On the July tour [on clay] I was able to play many [13] and feel quite good physically, so we’ll see,” she added. The fact is that 2025 was marked by setbacks and she finally had to stop in October, which means that from now on, including the US Open, everything will be a gain for her, standing after a difficult takeoff.

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“I want to climb the ranking and play many days in a row, without rest; it’s something I hadn’t done in years and that scared me. I want to be like I was before all the chaos… I have the goal of being as high as possible as soon as possible, but I also want to take it a bit calmly, which is not my strong point… Trying to find my level. I think when I look for my level, the results come out,” she adds. And now Gauff, a great opportunity on the horizon to make the most of, regardless of the score: “I imagine the crowd will respond, but well, it’s not something that bothers me much; on the contrary, I like it and I face the challenge eagerly.”