Paula Badosa, down at Roland Garros due to a vertebral fracture

Paula Badosa will not be able to compete from this Sunday at Roland Garros due to a fracture in a vertebra, according to Cadena Ser on Thursday and later confirmed by the player herself. The 25-year-old Spanish tennis player suffered the injury while competing in the recent tournament in Rome and will miss the French great, although the estimated period of absence, of eight to 12 weeks, would also keep her away from Wimbledon, which begins on July 3.

Badosa suffered a fall during the match against Tunisia's Ons Jabeur. According to the Ser, the setback did not seem serious and he could even play three more matches – against Marta Kostyuk and Karolina Muchova, before falling to Jelena Ostapenko – but the insistence of the pain forced him to undergo some tests and the extent of the injury – "stress fracture in the L4 vertebra", as specified by the aforementioned media – rules it out in a fulminant way for the second major of the course.

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The unfinished "process" of Paula Badosa

"When everything seemed to be fine again, bad news again just before starting a Grand Slam. In the Rome tournament [where he progressed to the quarter-finals] I had a stress fracture in my spine. It has been very hard news after the start of the year so difficult with injuries, "corroborated the tennis player through her social networks. "It's a fucked up moment, really. When I got the news it was a total shock. Mentally it was very hard, but knowing me I am quite stubborn and I know that I will do my best to return as soon as possible. It's not easy. I was trying to find my game," he said in a statement collected by the EFE agency.

It should be remembered that in January, at the gates of the Australian Open, the Catalan – currently the 29th in the WTA world list – already had to absent herself from the first big event due to a last-minute injury to her right thigh. Now, the misfortune is repeated and in addition to depriving him of the two great annual events on European territory, Paris and London, truncates the evolution of the last dates and will also condition the summer strip, with the landing at the US Open (from August 28) as the most realistic objective.

Technical relief and rebound

This last physical setback is a severe emotional blow for the athlete, who after a curvilinear period and without the desired results began to rediscover a good version on the track. "I don't even win the Parcheesi... But I will keep fighting," he resigned in September, as he descended in the ranking – after having ascended to number two, in April of last year – and could not get back on the fly. Back to the charge, he fitted the previous stick to Australia and then was overcoming a complicated re-engagement; a virus diminished him on the desert tour – absence in Abu Dhabi, and first rounds in Doha and Dubai – and later he ran into major rivals both in North America and in the European phase on clay.

"I'm leaving with a lot of desire and motivated," she said after being knocked out by Maria Sakkari in the knockout stages of Madrid. "I come from where I come from, from below, so playing like that adds up to a lot... This is a process, and for a month I have been feeling better; after the bump I've had, this is valuable," he added at the Caja Mágica. Detached since the beginning of March from coach Jorge García, with whom she reached her peak and conquered Indian Wells in 2021, she opted for a young duo on the bench – Eduard Esteve and Pol Toledo, both 28 years old – to recover the effervescence and recover the lost ground.

💔💔💔💔 pic.twitter.com/LPHgjtcSYv

— Paula Badosa (@paulabadosa) May 25, 2023

In an ascending line, he signed the quarterfinals in Charleston and Stuttgart, and both in the Spanish capital and then in Rome he left an optimistic trace for Paris. "I've been from less to more for several weeks, I'm feeling good; I think I'm on the right track," he told the Foro Italico. Now, however, his back is stumbling and will force him to stop for two to three months, compromising the remainder of the campaign. Roland Garros was, without a doubt, his greatest motivation, the tournament he has always dreamed of and the major in which he went the furthest; it happened two years ago, when she fell in the quarterfinals to Slovenia's Tamara Zidansek in her first Chatrier match. As a junior he celebrated it in 2015, with 17 years.

"Experience teaches you to take on these moments. Maturity helps you assimilate situations of this type and tells you to get up and find the positive side, and not the negative. The years help me see it that way. The process will be delicate and there are weeks in which I will not be able to do absolutely anything, but I will put everything on my part, "he reflected in EFE; "Now I will have time to reconsider, think and motivate myself to return with more desire and, for example, know that when the other players are going to have more wear, I will have more freshness. I will try to get to Wimbledon on time, although it will be difficult because of the deadlines."

Abruptly removed from the stage, Spanish tennis will have four female representatives at Roland Garros, Cristina Bucsa (67th), Rebeka Masarova (68th), Nuria Párrizas (93rd) and Sara Sorribes (132nd); they could be joined by Aliona Bolsova (131st), as long as she manages to overcome the qualifying phase that takes place these days.

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