New York, Sep 3 (EFE).- Paula Badosa was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open on Tuesday and admitted her disappointment both for her tennis in this match and for not having been able to handle her nerves well in such an opportunity.
“I am very disappointed with my performance in this match. I think Emma Navarro played very well and managed the situation very well. I was a complete disaster,” said the Spaniard in a press conference.
“I never had any momentum in this match. I played four or five games well. I was 5-1 up (in the second set) but I never felt like myself on the court. I didn’t serve well, I didn’t play well from the baseline (…). I was surprised because I was playing quite well in other matches, I felt good. But when I came on the court, I didn’t manage the situation or the emotions well (…). I wanted to win so much that sometimes that doesn’t help at all,” she said.
World number 12, American Emma Navarro stopped Badosa, ranked 29th, in her tracks 6-2, 7-5 in one hour and 12 minutes.
Badosa, in a great reaction after losing the first set, went 5-1 up in the second set, one step away from equalizing the score and taking the outcome to the third and final set.
But between her rival’s improvement and the Spaniard’s disconnection, the situation changed radically: Navarro won six games in a row and dashed Badosa’s hopes.
“The first thing I wanted to do, to be honest, was to leave the court. In the end, when you are so down with such negative thoughts, you want to leave because in the end you become like an ant,” she said about that second set in which, according to her, she also couldn’t find the leg speed and concentration she needed.
“I think losing a set after being 5-1 up is the first time that it has happened to me in my career. There is always a first time for everything and it had to happen today, unfortunately. I still need to think about what happened because I had two serves (to win the set) and I started to fail. I lost, I don’t know, like 20 points in a row. It was very strange because I am a pretty consistent player,” she added.
Badosa, who has been very outspoken about mental health throughout her career, said she woke up feeling fine this morning but that as soon as she set foot in Arthur Ashe Stadium things started to go wrong.
“You look so close but at the same time so far away (…). I think my head was everywhere except in the present,” he said.
“It’s something I’ve been working on and improving a lot, but it’s something that sometimes hurts me a lot. Wanting something so much and thinking so far ahead that you can’t even focus on the moment,” she added.
He also stressed how painful such a defeat is in a Grand Slam when “your dream is always to reach the later rounds” of a major tournament.
“I have to learn to be happy, to be more in the present. Always when tense moments come, especially in my case a ‘grand slam’. I manage a WTA 1,000 or a 500 much better because I’ve been through it more. But a ‘grand slam’, the desire and wanting it so much is a bit too much for me in these rounds. And it already happened to me three years ago too,” she said in reference to the Roland Garros quarterfinals in 2021, so far her best result in a ‘major’.
Despite this defeat, Badosa has sealed a brilliant summer with which she has returned to the tennis elite, after a journey through the desert of injuries and poor results, thanks to the title in Washington, the semi-finals in Cincinnati and now the quarter-finals in New York.
“When you see the difference from when I was in Madrid, when I was out of the top 100, to now… Well, I would have signed, obviously. You tell me right now and I want more: I don’t want the top 20, I want the top 10, when I’m in the top 10 I want the top 5… It’s always been the same for me,” explained Badosa, who, despite this disappointment, said she was “very proud” of her return to the top of tennis.
