Badosa wrote in a social media post<\/a>:<\/p>\n\u201cYou have no idea what it\u2019s like to live with a chronic injury and still choose to keep going. To wake up everyday not knowing how your body will respond, searching for solutions, and fighting for something you love and give everything even when it\u2019s so difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, Badosa has found rebuilding her world ranking difficult, and came into this year\u2019s event in Berlin on the back of a five-match losing streak. But after defeating Suzan Lamens of the Netherlands for the right to face Gauff, Badosa rebounded from a one-sided first set to clinch her first top-10 win since she beat Emma Navarro at the same tournament one year ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was playing really really hard \u2026 It was really difficult. My coach, after the first set, told me he never saw Coco play like this,\u201d Badosa said of Gauff\u2019s performance in her on-court interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super-happy with the third set, how I managed it, because this year, they weren\u2019t coming to my side,\u201d Badosa, who is now 3-5 in three-set matches in 2026, said.<\/p>\n
Badosa\u2019s first serve did more damage as the match progressed. She won fewer than 50 percent of points behind it in the opener, but got that figure up to 61 percent in the second set and then 75 percent in the third. She also started taking the ball earlier and on the rise, which Gauff had been doing behind her forehand in the opening set. In the second and third, the American started letting the ball drop too far below its apex, reducing her aggressiveness and letting Badosa take control of the match.<\/p>\n
The loss means Gauff has now not won a match on grass since Wimbledon 2024, with four consecutive defeats. Badosa will play Linda Noskov\u00e1 of the Czech Republic or France\u2019s Diane Parry in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
\u2018Gauff needs a win on grass in the worst way\u2019<\/p>\n
Analysis by Matthew Futterman<\/p>\n
This is not the way Coco Gauff would have wanted to start her grass season.<\/p>\n
Last year she had a pretty good excuse. She won the French Open, jetted home for a week of publicity then, flew back to Europe and got right back to competing. It didn\u2019t go well.<\/p>\n
She lost her first match in Berlin to Wang Xin Yu and her first match at Wimbledon to Dayana Yastremska. Those losses led to something of spiral that led to a coaching change and effort to transform her serve and forehand that has produced mixed results.<\/p>\n
This year she lost in the third round at Roland Garros. That means it\u2019s been three weeks since she\u2019s played a tournament match. Rest was not a factor against Badosa.<\/p>\n
Badosa was the prime mover that led to Gauff\u2019s defeat, lifting herself in the second set as she took the ball early and went on the front foot. Still, Gauff had her chances to take the lead early in both the second and third sets but let Badosa escape hard-fought service games.<\/p>\n
Gauff also didn\u2019t give a lot of reasons for belief that she can produce better results on grass than she has in recent years, where the low bounce and her tendency to hit the ball as it falls from its peak are less than ideal given her heavy western forehand that sends the racket face through the ball at an awkward angle.<\/p>\n
Where Gauff goes from here on grass will take some decisions. As recently as 2023 she played Eastbourne the week before Wimbledon to get more matches. She made the semifinals but then lost in the first round at Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
At this point, two years and another tournament removed from her last win on grass, she could use a win on her most challenging surface in the worst way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like the majority of the WTA Tour, Paula Badosa has only played a few matches this grass season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-710772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}