Paula Badosa: “Sometimes you have to take a beating to get ahead”

Paula Badosa has been fighting a major battle for over a year, that of continuing a career that has been surrounded by questions and cortisone ever since. And the tension is palpable. The serious gesture of these days is accompanied by expressiveness during the duel against the young Linda Fruhvirtova on Court 17 at Wimbledon, a few gestures because her rival has requested medical assistance and she, seven years older, 19 versus 26, knows what this is about and interprets that it is simply a mumbling tactic to block the action, set down already. So the Spaniard walks back and forth, irritated, and comments on it with her bench. And as she said, she expresses herself. Spanish, Catalan, English.

“She’s young, but she knows everything, eh?” she protests. “She knows everything, the tadpole…” she continues. “She’s like that all the time!” she adds before the match continues and seals her access to the third round (6-4 and 6-2), where she will face Daria Kasatkina this Friday. Happy to get through, her tone is not, however, entirely in keeping with the good progress she has made in this takeoff in London, where she has already improved on the result recorded last year – she retired in the second round – and where she hopes to continue gathering optimistic feelings. She says that her back is respecting her more (or at least that it is better controlled), that she has recently competed with more confidence and that from time to time a good bump helps to change the course of events. It happened to her in the Caja Mágica.

Badosa arrived there at the end of April anxious to do well; wanting to run, surely, more than recommended. And she paid for it. Dismounted from the noble zone of the circuit, she even disappeared from the top-100 and the process of returning is being very hard, also constantly pending the response of the back. The Catalan answers the question asked by EL PAÍS.

“What was hardest for me was getting physically fit and recovering from one day to the next. Physically, I was having a hard time and my back wasn’t responding, and mentally, whether you like it or not, you lose confidence; it’s something I didn’t expect either, because I’ve always thought that confidence goes away if you lose. But when you get away from competition for a while, you feel the loss, it goes away. And that was also hard for me to recover. I think my turning point came on the clay court tour, in the Madrid tournament, which hurt me a lot,” she says, referring to her defeat in the first round against Galician Jessica Bouzas.

Enjoy again

That day, Badosa suffered a great disappointment, but not so much because of the result – a defeat in three sets – as because of the image offered to the crowd that probably motivates her the most, along with that of Roland Garros. “I was coming off the injury [pequeña rotura en el aductor] and I was very bad, but from there I re-emerged a little and I became the Paula I want to be; I also recovered a part of my team that I had at the time [el preparador David Antona, con el que había trabajado en 2022] And that also gives me confidence. And I try to look for little things to rebuild that confidence,” he continues.

From there, she stresses, she got back on track and perceives a progression that has been questioned many times during the last few months, times of uncertainty. Her back, treacherous beyond belief. However, she trusts that her physique will respond and that it will allow her to gradually trace increasingly longer routes in tournaments, with the aim of continuing to gain pace and climb again in the world rankings – she was number two in the world in 2022 – because it hurts her greatly to see herself there, in 93rd place; out of place, considering her ability. From there, work and humility. “I think I’m starting to be another player, and that’s what I base myself on. Sometimes you have to take the biggest beating to get ahead. And, as I always say, you are like the Phoenix, and Madrid was the turning point,” she says.

Regardless of the results, she is hopeful that everything will improve and that despite the limited time of rest – the match with Fruhvirtova was postponed for a day due to rain – she can be up to the task of fighting Kasatkina. “I’m very prepared, with my team, a physiotherapist, the doctor… They’re monitoring everything very well. Maybe it’s a disadvantage not to have a day of rest, because that helps me a lot, but I finished early and I’m in very good physical shape,” Badosa said to reporters, clinging to the idea of ​​making up for lost ground and, above all, of enjoying the sport she loves so much on the courts again.

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