around midday in Melbourne, and despite the fact that have pain –kicked off the year with a periostitis– and in the last three days we have visited the fever, Paula Badosa (New York, 22 years old) sporting a smile from ear to ear and left with pleasure in the interview room, Melbourne Park. Just beat 6-1 6-0 (on 57 minutes) to Johanna Larsson, a pugnacious veteran who occupies the position 39 of the circuit, and thus to achieve his first victory in a Grand Slam. “It is superespecial, because I had been waiting a long time for this moment. Last year I could win and I could not pass this barrier, and in this I had accustomed very well. I have left a game very, very well,” says the tennis player.

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gone are a thousand ghosts.

One of them, probably the worst. Fear. “Suddenly, I fell into a tailspin. We generated a set of expectations to be too high around me. It was said that it was the next Garbiñe, the next Sharapova… And, in the end, they are great players who have won Grand Slams, and I was just 17 years old,” says this newspaper, referring to his conquest of Roland Garros junior and, in consequence, the theoretical release. Theoretical, because the reality sports used to devour promises.

“they told Me that the next year must already be among the top, and I was not ready to take on all of that. I didn’t have an easy environment, not to me. The people I got a lot of things in your head and the situation came to me very great, because in the end I was very young,” continues; “until then I don’t know, and from there it seemed that I had to win all the matches. It was very hard, I created a lot of anxiety; I inflated the head and at the end I suffered a depression”.

The story because it suffers a lot in silence. I want to standardize it

Daughter models, Badosa was born in New York city –although he decided to play for Spain– and began to wield the racket to seven years in Platja d’aro (Girona), when his parents decided to return to Catalonia. In 2015 it is uncovered in Paris, but before had already issued signal to reach the third round of Miami. However, nothing more to savor that success teen came the collapse that now says. “I got in a hole. I was not prepared mentally or physically; he had good hits, but otherwise was very far away. Then, I fell into a personal crisis. He thought nothing of what he was doing made sense,” he says.

it Was there when he appeared as a key figure, his coach. Xavi Budo, tutor for many years during the canary Carla Suarez –one of the references of Spanish during the last decade, unlocked a situation that seemed irreversible. “In September of 2018, she called me and told me that I was broken, completely shattered and that he did not know if he wanted to continue playing. It was very self destructive, very emotional and very extremist,” describes the trainer in Melbourne; “it was a broken toy, so we talked for many hours, and I told him my opinion. I told him that the high performance is not just to train, but in a style of life”.

The first step consisted in retrieving the self-esteem. To the person. “Paula had a crisis of anxiety very high and the expectations they had eaten. We work a lot more outside of the track within to begin to see the light, and then you chop a lot of stone because it came from a lack of a culture of effort”, continues the technical, which are subsequently rehabilitated to the player by putting a few bases. “We decided to compete 30 weeks because the circuit is very tough and getting into the top-100 is very complicated. Took three or four years standing, between the 150 and the 250 in the world, and rose to the post 86 [today is the 97]. It was a first year very positive”, explains Budo.

Was totally broken… he Came from a lack of a culture of effort”

XAVI BUDO, COACH

Employs the barcelona the metaphor of mount Everest to illustrate the shift. Speaking of higher objectives for this 2020 and that the conversations revolve around the tennis, and not so much on the psychological problems. Also, from a technical development –“now have a right to much more clean and is broadening patterns of play”– and balance. “I always say that this is like climbing a great mountain: sometimes you go 400 meters and 100 other, but there you go installing base camps. We now have a minimum of professional that we didn’t have before. Small and a teenager had a highly challenging environment, he said that I had to climb in a helicopter, and the Everest climbs meter…”.

Straightened, Badosa has taken the step to be feared by so many and so many athletes, pass on their experience. “In that sense, I think that young women are not prepared enough. Win a few games good and promise, but that is inflated a bubble that many are not able to withstand. I decide to tell about it because I perceived that in this world many people suffer in silence and passed through a situation similar to mine. I want to standardize it, because it is something that can happen to anyone. Now I try to go step-by-step, not to think of all the time in the future and not to listen to too many people”, concluded the player, and cited by Petra Kvitova in the next round and was convinced that the stone to stone and the day-to-day you will be rewarded in the hereafter.

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