With 6-5 in her favor, the final set, Paula Badosa is overcome with nervous laughter. Next, the tennis player crosses herself before getting up from the bench, ready to close the match, and immediately afterwards she raises her arms euphorically and celebrates standing tall on Court 8 of the Roland Garros complex. Faced with adversity and a challenge that was practically heads or tails, that of the whipping of her back, her pride. A lot of pride. She defeated Yulia Putintseva (4-6, 6-1 and 7-5, after 2h 01m) thanks to her fourth comeback in the last five matches she has played – two in Rome and another two in Paris – and retires towards the happy locker room, signing balls, giving winks and drawing the v for victory when a fan asks him for the photo.
The Catalan has reasons to smile, because in the current circumstances, each victory counts triple, if not more. Today, at 26 years old, Badosa is a tennis player on the wire who is dealing with a delicate back injury – after the vertebral fracture (L4) she suffered in May of last year – and who, openly, does not know what will happen from now on. The horizon has the shape of an immense question mark. Treatment based on cortisone (infiltrations) has more or less effect, but it is difficult to find a definitive remedy, no matter how much she consults and consults. Pain comes and goes and, hand in hand, ghosts come and go.
“After Rome (three weeks ago), I felt discomfort again. I had to return to Spain to infiltrate. And that generated a lot of doubts and uncertainty in me about how I was going to be able to continue with my career depending on that, when the effect of the injections is not always going to be the same,” he said on Tuesday night, after beating in the first round the British Katie Boulter; “It’s hard for me to manage it, because there are times when I wake up with pain and I have to stop training, that happened a couple of days ago. Then, in some phases of the game, I feel it a little more and I get scared, so it’s like I’m fighting against that and the opponent, as well as myself.”
This time, it is redone again. Putintseva, 39th in the world, is one of those players who compete like a dog, and she forces her to win again by walking uphill. She overcame Emma Navarro and Diana Shnaider in Rome, and she stands up for the second time in Paris, the tournament that seduces her like no other and in which at the age of 16 she was proclaimed junior champion. No place gives her more excitement than Roland Garros, where in 2021 she managed to land in the quarterfinals; The next year she stayed in the third round and last year she couldn’t compete, she dropped out at the last minute. On Saturday she will face a most demanding crossroads with her friend Aryna Sabalenka, the number two in the world; and against the Belarusian, what she may feel about the result will prevail in the end.
Mental jumble
“I’m really looking forward to the game. The last time (mid-April, in Stuttgart) ended in a sad way (retiring due to pain), but I learned a lot. I know how I have to play against her, I know what I’m going to find from her. She is very aggressive. But I have always believed in myself, because otherwise, neither she nor she would take to the court. And she is a player who motivates me a lot. I don’t want to leave with a bad taste in my mouth twice. “I’m going to try to do the best I can,” she points out in the conference room, where she is accompanied (on the side) by her romantic partner, the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas.
The tennis player from Begur remains with the “mental strength” used in these first two matches in Paris and at the same time values the positive effect of the treatment during these days. “She is responding quite well. It helps me a lot to have rest days between games, so the feelings I have are good. Obviously I’m taking great care of myself and calculating loads a lot in training, not in games. They are being very long (she invested 2h 18m in Tuesday’s premiere against Boulter), but that no longer depends so much on me. Otherwise, I feel good,” she conveys.
Faced with the back that wants to knock him down, Badosa counterattacks in rebellion. The victory against Putintseva – one of the lowest on the circuit, with 1.63 – boosts him twenty-four places on the list – from 139th to 115th – and if he beats Sabalenka, he would return again to the top-100. In any case, the priority for her is to get back on track in a career suspended in the air and put an end to the mental mess that haunts her while she plays. “I feel a little lost, it’s hard for me to manage it. There are so many things I think about while playing a game that it is difficult for me. It’s hard for me to control my emotions,” admits the Catalan, a tennis player who, contrary to the tendency of professionals to close themselves in, expresses herself openly.
You can follow The USA Print in Facebook and xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
_
