Paula Badosa he fell one step away from reaching his first Grand Slam semi-finals. Her dream ended at Roland Garros when the Slovenian Tamara Zidansek, who had never made it past a second round in a major, fired her 7-5, 4-6 and 8-6 in a two-and-a-half hour battle.
The Spanish, in her debut in the quarterfinals in Paris, was able to leave much earlier, since she went 7-5 and 3-1 down on the scoreboard, but He came back, forced the third and had options to sign up for the game. Badosa, in the first game of the day, was a ‘break’ up on the scoreboard, 2-0, but allowed Zidansek to re-engage. As there was no tiebreaker in Paris in the third, the match would be decided when one of the tennis players won by two games apart.
The key game came with 6-6 on the scoreboard, when Badosa had three break balls in a row. Zidansek, number 85 in the world, deactivated them all and did not open any more loopholes. He held his serve and placed himself with two match balls to eliminate Badosa. The first sent her to the doubles hall, but the second converted it to buckle her pass to the semifinals, where she will wait for the winner of the duel between Elena Rybakina and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Javier Martí’s pupil, who has won 17 of the last 20 games he has played, will rise to 32nd place in the ranking next Monday, his best historical classification, and he will focus from now on the grass tour, with the goal set at Wimbledon, a tournament in which he already knows what it is to play the final draw.
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