Life for the former top 3 and current 101st, Paula Badosa, is not easy at all. A week after abandoning the second round match in Stuttgart, Germany, and bursting into tears, the Spaniard opened her campaign at the WTA 1000 in Madrid with a comeback defeat.
Badosa spoke to journalists after being upset by compatriot Jessica Bouzas Maneiro: “It was a difficult match, she played very, very well… and I really didn’t”, confessed Badosa after her defeat to Bouzas. “I’m disappointed, I wanted to come here, but obviously I come from what I come from. I expected something more, but I know I can’t expect much more either. What affected me most was my level of tennis, physically it is what it is. If I go on the court because I’m well, but the problem today was that my level of tennis was very low”, she added, who has systematically suffered from injuries.
The tennis player was then asked if she was still passionate about the sport and declared: “I really like tennis, honestly. I love competing, but I don’t like how I am, nor seeing myself where I am. I’ve always had very high expectations, since I was little I’ve been seen like that one having great potential, I’ve experienced great emotions in this sport, I know what it means to be at the top… That’s why seeing myself down now is so painful.”
The tennis player understands that it is a time of learning and healing wounds to move forward: “I still expect a lot from myself, that’s why it’s so difficult. There are days when it’s even difficult for me to be at the club, I’m not what I want to be now. Every week there is a disappointment, today it was because of the level of tennis, but normally it was because of injuries. I have to recover a lot emotionally”, he concludes.
