A year after being told by a doctor to seriously consider retirement, Paula Badosa is into her first Grand Slam semi-final, after inflicting Coco Gauff’s first defeat of 2025.
The Spaniard is continuing to manage a chronic back injury but she will return to the top 10 for the first time since October 2022 after crushing one of the favourites for the Australian Open title.
‘At one point last year I was pretty close (to retirement) because I wasn’t seeing myself at this level,’ said the 27-year-old after her 7-5, 6-4 win. ‘The back wasn’t responding well. I didn’t find solutions. But I wanted to give it a last try, a last chance to finish the year and see how it would go.
‘Well, here I am. I’m really proud of what we went through with all my team and especially how I fought through all that, especially mentally.’
For Gauff this was a crushing defeat after an electric start to the season which saw her win the United Cup for the USA, beating her nemesis Iga Swiatek in the final. Her forehand, always a weakness, was much improved in that match but against Badosa it was a leaky tap of unforced errors: 28 on that side.
The 20-year-old is developing into a more offensive player, but the rock-solid Badosa was able to trade from the back and wait for her opponent to miss.
Spaniard Paula Badosa thought her career was over last year, now she has surged into the Australian Open semi-finals
Badosa claimed the major scalp of American Coco Gauff, who was the overwhelming favourite
‘I have to be aggressive,’ said Gauff. ‘I won most of the matches the last few months by playing aggressive.
‘I think it’s just being more comfortable with that. I’m making a shift in my game. I haven’t always played that aggressive. I do have faith that it will become more of an instinct instead of a second-guess.’
Gauff will come again and she is right to commit to a more attacking style. Such a shift will cost her the odd match but she has a decade or more to reap the eventual rewards.
Badosa has less time on her side but she is making hay while she can. She suffered a stress fracture of her back in 2023 and, despite returning to the tour relatively quickly, she made little progress and was frequently forced off court.
When she did play, it was only with cortisone injections. Badosa was told she could have no more than three cortisone injections per year – and when she had already had two by last April, it felt almost impossible for her to continue.
But she overhauled many areas of her team – ‘my fitness coach, my nutritionist, and everything that was connected a little bit with my back’ – and the results have been dramatic. Badosa has not required a single cortisone injection since.
‘My back started to respond really well with the exercises they were telling me, with the food I had to eat, with the supplements I had to take. Also, new doctors. So the puzzle started to look better,’ she said.
‘I started to play more matches, more matches.
Badosa broke down in emotional scenes after claiming her biggest scalp since doctors told her to retire from the sport
Badosa wrote “three times the charm” in Spanish on the camera after her emotional win
‘At the beginning I was scared of how I’m going to wake up the next day.’
Given all this, and the fact she is treated uncharted waters in the last four, Badosa was asked if she will be able to play with freedom, without expectations?
‘I’m never going to feel freedom until I win the tournament,’ she replied. ‘I want to be one of the best players in the world and prove that.’
She is going to take some stopping.
