PAULA BADOSA ADMITS 'I WAS A COMPLETE DISASTER' AFTER DRAMATIC US OPEN COLLAPSE

Paula Badosa claimed that she was a "complete disaster" during her US Open quarter-final.

The No. 26 seed led Emma Navarro 5-1 in the second set after dropping the opener. But Navarro stormed back to win the last six games and came through 6-2 7-5.

Badosa later suggested that she never had the momentum, even with her huge advantage in set two.

The Spaniard's sensational North American hard-court summer finally came to an end on Tuesday as she crashed out in the quarter-final of the US Open. It was Badosa's second career quarter-final, more than three years after she reached the same stage at the French Open.

Navarro stormed through the opening set but the 26-year-old seemed to be making a comeback when she led 5-1 in the second. All of a sudden, the American was back in it. Navarro won 24 of the last 28 points and earned a moral bagel - six games in a row.

Badosa was visibly devastated after the loss, making a hasty exit. And she later gave a brutal review of her performance. "Well, I'm very disappointed with my level today. I think she played really good and she managed the situation really well, and I was completely disaster," she said at the start of her post-match press conference.

Asked what changed the momentum while she had a comfortable lead in set two, Badosa cut the reporter off and replied: "I never had the momentum in this match. I played four or five games okay. It was 5-1, but I never felt myself in the court. I didn't feel serving well, playing well from the baseline. That's my biggest strength.

"So I think today it surprised me because I was playing pretty good the other matches, I was feeling good. But when I walked into the court, I think I didn't match well the situation or the emotions. It was a bit hard to handle for me. I wanted to win so much that sometimes that doesn't help at all."

Asked what was disastrous about her performance, the Spaniard didn't hold back. "Everything. Everything," Badosa declared. "This is the first time it happens to me in my career. I think losing a set from 5-1 up, I never did that before. So I think there is always a first time for something, so it had to come today unfortunately."

"I don't know. I still need to think what happened, because I had two service games there also. I started to miss. I lost, I don't know, 20 points almost in a row. It's very weird for me because I'm quite a consistent player, so I wasn't expecting that either. So I'm quite disappointed."

But Badosa is still happy with her North American hard-court summer on reflection. Earlier this year she dropped out of the top 100 when a back injury threatened to derail her career. But she has since won the title in Washington, reached the semi-final in Cincinnati and the quarters in New York.

She explained: "Now I say it's a disaster, but when I started in Washington I would sign all the results, for sure. And coming from where I'm coming from, look, I have to be happy. I don't know. Maybe I'm 15 in the race, so I wasn't expecting that a few months ago. So on that, I'm really proud of myself.

"The thing that for me makes me the way I am today, it's a Slam and, you know, your dream is always to make last rounds in a Slam. Performing the way I performed today, I know that if it wasn't a slam I would perform well. So that's what's a little bit why I'm like this today, you know. Because I didn't know how to handle it the best way."

2024-09-03T18:35:59Z dg43tfdfdgfd