{"id":78619,"date":"2025-01-21T08:23:31","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T13:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=78619"},"modified":"2025-01-21T08:23:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T13:23:31","slug":"paula-badosa-australian-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2025\/01\/21\/paula-badosa-australian-open\/","title":{"rendered":"Paula Badosa in Australian Open Semifinals After Contemplating Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An emotional Paula Badosa reached her first Grand Slam semifinal at the Australian Open on Tuesday, sharing that she nearly quit tennis last year due to a long-standing back injury.<\/p>\n<p>The Spanish 11th seed shocked World #3 Coco Gauff 7-5 6-4 in the quarterfinals in Melbourne to become the first Spanish woman to make it to a Grand Slam semifinal since Garbine Muguruza did so in Melbourne in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>This achievement marks an incredible return to tennis for the World #12, who had fallen well outside the Top 100 just a year ago because of a stress fracture in her back.<\/p>\n<p><a  href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zwqnHOEuGTc\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">She recounted<\/a> some difficult times during last year&#8217;s clay-court season when her inflamed lower back did not improve despite treatment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I mean, a year ago I was here with my back that I didn&#8217;t know if I had to retire from this sport.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I thought about stopping when I was doing injections because they told me I had to do max three a year, and I was already on my second one in the fourth month of the year,&#8221; said Badosa.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Paula Badosa On-Court Interview | Australian Open 2025 Quarterfinal\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zwqnHOEuGTc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>However, the condition started to improve, and after reaching the fourth round at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/category\/wimbledon\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Wimbledon<\/a>, Badosa began to regain her form.<\/p>\n<p>She clinched victory in Washington, reached the semifinals in Cincinnati, advanced to the quarterfinals at the US Open, and finished strong with back-to-back semifinals at the China Open and Ningbo Open, propelling herself back up the rankings.<\/p>\n<p>She began aggressively against the in-form third seed Gauff, putting pressure on the American&#8217;s serve early in the first set and broke at 5-5 to close out the first set in 56 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Badosa then intensified her efforts in the second set, racing to a 5-2 lead with a double break. Although she lost one service game as Gauff pushed hard, she ultimately secured her victory in 1 hour and 43 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>This was her first victory over a Top 10 opponent at a Grand Slam, and she will return to the Top 10 when the new rankings are released on Monday.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An emotional Paula Badosa reached her first Grand Slam semifinal at the Australian Open on Tuesday, sharing that she nearly quit tennis last year due to a long-standing back injury. The Spanish 11th seed shocked World #3 Coco Gauff 7-5 6-4 in the quarterfinals in Melbourne to become the first Spanish woman to make it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4883,"featured_media":62610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,9,4],"tags":[42694,2747,200,12171],"class_list":["post-78619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australian-open","category-featured","category-news","category-wta","tag-2025-australian-open","tag-coco-gauff","tag-garbine-muguruza","tag-paula-badosa"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78627,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78619\/revisions\/78627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}