Just a couple of days separated the two images. The two great figures of Spanish women’s tennis in the last decade, in the same city, Madrid, but in two completely opposite dimensions. Garbiñe Muguruza radiant and happy at the Laureus awards gala, already one hundred percent detached from the yoke that tennis had become for her after having officially announced what everyone knew. Meanwhile, Paula Badosa, her friend and partner in fatigue, frustrated, falling again in a first round, this time in her home tournament.
This is how the Catalan tennis player has been for more than a year because of some chronic back pain that do not disappear. Stick after stick since the fourth lumbar vertebra fractured due to stress a year ago in Rome Masters 1,000. Only 27 games played in 2023. And in 2024, more of the same. With each attempt to return, stumbles, bad feelings and frustration. Discreet role in his return to the circuit in the last Australian Open, outside of Indian Wells, one of his favorite tournaments, tears in Stuttgart and a farewell to Madrid at the first opportunity.
And “constant suffering”, in the words of the player herself, who has put her career at the crossroads. Badosa, number two in the world a couple of seasons ago and champion of Indian Wells a few months before, it came out last week from top-100 of the circuit and right now it has gone to 15 games played so far this campaign, nine defeats and a third round (Australia) as the best result.
Cortisone for pain
Poor background for someone who not so long ago landed in tournaments as one of the rivals to beat. His physique doesn’t allow him any more. And what’s worse, it threatens not to get better. “After some check-ups in March, the doctors told me that “It would be difficult for me to continue my career,” Badosa confessed upon arriving in Madrid, where he also explained that he is receiving treatment with cortisone injections to mitigate the severe pain he has been suffering.
And there, in those moments, the comparisons emerge and the figure of Garbiñe, liberated and happy after taking a step aside. While she enjoys her retirement, Badosa suffers and the question comes. Is this whole process leading you to “falling out of love” with tennis? That, and no other, is the key.
Laureus Awards Ceremony. / Kiko Huesca
“I really like tennis, I love competing, but I don’t like to see myself how I am. I have always had very high expectations, I have lived what it is like to be at the top and now it’s very difficult to see me down. Every week there is a disappointment, today because of the level of tennis,” a Badosa resigns, recognizing that “I’m having a hard time getting up. The level of tennis is there, but I have to recover quite emotionally.” In this, and in learning to live with the pain, is the resolution of the mystery that has turned her career into.
“I have been suffering a lot with this injury. It is very complicated, chronic, difficult. I am doing everything in my power and I am working every day with my team to feel good. Zero pain? It’s very difficult, but I’m doing my best; If you allow me to get on the track and compete, I have already won. If I have to do the treatments that I said [inyecciones de cortisona]”I will do them to extend my career as much as possible,” says Badosa, who refuses to kneel with the current sensations and thinks about “play three or four more years.”
For now, reality, full of uncertainties, walks on the other side of your thoughts.
2024-04-29 06:03:07
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