Paula Badosa

Paula Badosa: The Glamourous Spanish Tennis Sensation

Paula Badosa is a Spanish professional tennis player who reached as high as #2 on the WTA rankings in 2022. Aside from being a very good tennis player, Paula Badosa is also known for her good looks. She gets her looks from her parents, who were both models. In this post, we will find out more about her. Let’s get started.

Paul Badosa: All You Need To Know

In 2015, Paula Badosa was proclaimed champion of Roland Garros in the junior individual category and two years later she was champion of Spain. She is currently one of the best tennis players in Spain, holding the 35th spot in the WTA ranking currently.

When was Paula Badosa born?

Badosa was born on November 15, 1997, in Manhattan, New York. Her father and her mother, Josep Badosa and Mireia Gibert, had emigrated to the United States a few years earlier to develop their modeling careers there. When she was seven years old, the family returned to Spain. Once in Barcelona, she started playing tennis, playing in the Playa de Aro club. Later, looking for a change, she moved to Valencia; three years later she returned to Barcelona.

Paula Badosa: Tennis Career

Junior Career

Paula Badosa’s last year as a junior was 2015 when she was proclaimed champion of the  Roland Garros in the junior individual category. She defeated Bianca Turati in the first round, Evgeniya Levashova in the second, Charlotte Robillard-Millette in the third, Katerina Stewart in the quarterfinals and Anna Kalínskaya in the final with a 6-3 6-3. She appeared at the Paribas Diamond Games – Antwerp, where she lost in the last qualifying round to Kateryna Bondarenko. She later obtained Wild Cards for the Miami Masters and Madrid Masters but had to withdraw due to injury.

Senior Career

Paula Badosa also participated in the ITF 25K in Perigueux, Denain, and Turin and had her first Grand Slam appearance in the US Open. The great expectations that she developed in her last year as a junior collided with a harsh reality in the 2016 season. Various physical problems and mental depression of hers kept her far from the top. However, in 2017, she recovered by proclaiming herself the champion of Spain. In 2018 she signed with coach Xavier Budó and gained some stability in her game. It was thus that she won three ITF titles: two 25K and one 60k, and for the first time, she reached the quarterfinals of a WTA tournament. At the end of the season, she moved up the rankings, all the way up to 143rd.

Paula Badosa started 2019 with her best ranking of 140th in the world. In the first tournament of the season, she made it past the Australian Open qualifiers for the first time in her career but then lost to Kimberly Birrell in the first round. She subsequently played Burnie’s W60, making it to the final. She also reached the final of the W60 in Les Franqueses del Vallés and the semifinal of the W60 in La Bisbal but then failed at Roland Garros. She took advantage of her invitation to the Mallorca tournament to beat a top 50 in the world for the first time: Alison Riske.

Entrance in the top 100

Later that year, Paula Badosa would qualify for the third Grand Slam of the year by reaching her first draw final at Wimbledon. She then reached her first semifinal in a WTA tournament, in Palermo. Thanks to this, she rose in the ranking, banging at the gates of the top 100; she ranked 101.

The dream entrance into the top 100 came later when she qualified for the semifinals of the tournament in Karlsruhe. By the end of the season, her presence in the final draw of the 2020 Australian Open was certain. However, already in the tournament, Paula Badosa fell in the second round. The best result of that season was obtained by her at the Roland Garros, after beating the champions Sloane Stephens and Jeļena Ostapenko; she fell to the German Laura Siegemund. This outstanding performance in the Slam catapulted her to her best ever WTA ranking of 69.

Badosa started the 2021 season ranked 70th in the world. After the WTA tournament in Abu Dhabi, she rose to #67 and with her performance in the WTA Lyon she reached #53. At the Charleston Tournament, she scored one of her biggest victories by defeating Belinda Bencic, a player in the top 20. She later defeated Ashleigh Barty in the quarterfinals. She got a wild card for the 2021 Madrid Masters, where she beat Barbora Krejcíkova in the first round, Jil Teichmann in the second and Anastasija Sevastova, in the round of 16. She then went to the quarterfinals and semifinals, being one of the few Spanish tennis players to achieve it.

First title

On May 22, 2021, Badosa won her first WTA title, crowning herself champion in the Belgrade Tournament. She beat Croatian Ana Konjuh and moved up her rankings to #34.

Later, at Roland Garros, he reached the quarterfinals and secured his participation in the Olympic Games.

On October 17, 2021, Badosa earned her first WTA 1000 tournament in Indian Wells. In the final, she defeated the Belarusian Victoria Azárenka with a 7-6 (5), 2-6, 7-6 (2). Badosa is thus the first Spanish tennis player to win the so-called “fifth Grand Slam”. 

Paula Badosa climbed as high as #2 in the WTA ranking in 2022 but with a string of less than desirable performances since then, Paula Badosa’s ranking has slipped down to #35 currently.

How does Paula Badosa handle the pressure?

The pressure of the senior WTA tour got the better of her and she herself has recognized that she did not have the necessary maturity to face success and that pressure to always win so as not to disappoint anyone. Some injuries and that ill-carried pressure of hers kept her away from the slopes but she never thought of abandoning her great passion. “I got to go where I started playing in Playa de Aro, which is something that helped me a lot. I went to the club where I picked up my first racket one day alone. And it was remembering those moments when I started playing tennis because I loved it and enjoyed playing, and that helped me to be positive again and move on ”, she emphasized.

In 2018 she returned with renewed energy at the hands of Xavier Budó, Carla Suárez ‘s former coach, and won several titles and entered the first quarterfinals of a WTA tournament in Marrakech. A year later she passed the first qualifying phase of the Australian Open and there she played the Burnie tournament, where she reached the final. She returned to Roland Garros , this time as a senior tennis player, though she did not make it past qualifying and played her first draw final at Wimbledon, among others. Before the end of the season, Paula played some W25 tournaments in Japan, with good results, which helped her close the season in the top 100 and ensure her presence in the final draw of the Australian Open 2020.

What does Paula Badosa do other than tennis?

Even though tennis is her passion, her work, and her life, and she dedicates almost one hundred percent of her time to it, Paula loves to travel, dance (her father was also a dancer), fashion, watch FC Barcelona games and enjoy the little time she has between tournaments with her family. With a great personality, since she was little, she assures that it is difficult for her to show who she is but “if you scratch, I think I am a generous person, who defends my own and my people a lot. Since I was little until now I have always been a dreamer. And those dreams that I have I would like to achieve. In the end, we live once and I try to enjoy life, to have that joy, although it is not easy. I really enjoy being with my sister and my friends. The truth is that when I’m not playing tennis, it’s not that I stop still, ”she explained in an interview.

Who is Paula Badosa dating?

Paula Badosa has been dating Juan Betancourt for some time. Many of these hobbies (including tennis) are shared with her partner, a model of Cuban origin living in Spain Juan Betancourt (31). She has been dating him for several months. Juan has become her great supporter in the tournaments she plays, including the one in Indian Wells, in which the top model has been in the front row cheering her on and was the first person Paula hugged after her great victory. “Congratulations, you know what I think of you, enjoy your victory, the second of many. I love you, ”he wrote on her networks after seeing his girl lift the trophy. In August of this year, the couple shared their first photo together on Instagram enjoying a few days of relaxation in New York sometime after he broke up with the Spanish actress Andrea Duro, whom he dated for two years, and she had an affair with the presenter David Broncano.

Juan Betancourt is considered one of the best male models in the world. Grandson of the Cuban writer Juan Manuel Betancourt, he lived in Havana until he was 18 years old and shortly after he moved to Barcelona, he was discovered by an agent. After passing an exclusive casting in London, Juan became the image of the launch of Tom Ford’s skincare line for men, which opened international doors for him. Armani, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Ralph Lauren are some of the great designers for whom he has modeled and posed for magazines such as Vogue, Forbes, Vanity Fair, and Glamor. In 2015, he was chosen as the face of the cover of Men’s Health for the first time. In addition, the model has made his first steps as an actor with small roles in Las leyes de la termodinámica (2016), by producer Mateo Gil, along with Berta Vázquez and Chino Darín and we will soon see him in Toy Boy. He also participated in MasterChef Celebrity in 2017 (he finished in sixth place).

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