Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa has said goodbye in the quarter-finals of the US Open, the fourth and final ‘Grand Slam’ of the season, after losing on Tuesday to American Emma Navarro in two sets (6-2, 7-5), putting an end to one of her best opportunities in a ‘major’.
The Catalan, world number 29, succumbed after one hour and 12 minutes of play in a match in which, after losing the first set, she enjoyed a 5-1 lead in the second, but in which she saw how the local tennis player overcame the difference to take the match quickly.
Despite everything, Badosa is ending a good North American tour, in which she won the title at the WTA 500 in Washington to lift the fourth title of her career, and, above all, she is leaving with good feelings after months marked by a back injury.
On Tuesday, the Spaniard was hampered by a 3-0 lead from Navarro that left her trailing throughout the set. In the seventh game, she had two chances to break the game but was unable to convert it, before the American closed the set with another break.
In the second set, thanks to two breaks, she managed to take a 5-1 lead, but that was when her doubts began to set in. One after another, she wasted her serves and allowed her opponent to win six consecutive games that gave her the final victory.
Navarro, currently number 12 in the WTA rankings, thus reaches the semi-finals of a Grand Slam for the first time in her career. She will face the winner of the duel between Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka and Chinese Qinwen Zheng.
