Coco Gauff out of Australian Open after Paula Badosa wins in Melbourne

MELBOURNE, Australia – Coco Gauff is out of the Australian Open.

On a warm, sun-drenched Rod Laver Arena day that seemed tailored to her strengths, and in a matchup where she is the Grand Slam veteran, Gauff lost to Paula Badosa of Spain. Badosa, who returned from a potentially career-ending injury at this year’s Wimbledon, claimed the biggest Grand Slam win of his career, beating the 20-year-old American 7-5, 6-4.

“A lot more work to do,” she said about an hour after it was over. “Of course I’m disappointed, but I’m not completely devastated.”

For Gauff, that in itself was something of a victory. Her losses at last year’s majors, particularly fourth-round defeats to Emma Navarro at Wimbledon and the US Open, rattled her. After the US Open, she parted ways with one of her coaches, Brad Gilbert, and added another, Matt Daly, who could make technical changes to how she holds the racquet.

She also tried to adopt a new attitude, reminding herself that tennis matches are not life and death and that losing, which even the best players do sometimes, is just part of the journey.

“Some games are going to go my way, some aren’t,” Gauff said. “It’s one of those things that maybe a few years ago I would have felt a lot more devastated and felt like the world was coming to an end that type of sadness. Now I think it’s disappointed, that I could have done a little bit better in some areas.”

Gauff fell victim to her once again shaky forehand, but also to a gutsy Badosa, who followed the aggressive approach Gauff’s opponents have used over the past 10 days and four, now five fights.

After three months of watching Gauff go on the offensive to win nearly every match and tournament she played, her rivals are beginning to realize that they can no longer rely on Gauff’s weaknesses to beat themselves. They must attack her before she attacks them.

Badosa said that was her plan after her fourth-round fight. That was the easy part; she also did the hard part and executed it. Badosa grabbed every short ball – and many that weren’t so short – and hoped enough of them would hit their target. Gauff tried to match Badosa’s power with his own, and they played like two prize fighters, with no interest in dancing around each other. They would just swing out.

Gauff looked like she would put Badosa on the ropes midway through the first set, but she never got a break point and by the end of the set, the once weak forehand that had been largely steady for the past few months after she had adjusted. her approach began to wither under Badosa’s pressure.

The match turned with Gauff serving at 5-5 in the first set as Badosa and Gauff played the best points of the match, with Gauff chasing down Badosa’s attack and Badosa earning her opener with a neat half-volley off what looked like a safe passing shot from Gauff. A soft drop volley had the American clapping for her and two more audacious forehands on the next point gave her the break before she served out the set.

Gauff, who left the court after the first set, looked like she might make a surge early in the second. After losing her first service game, she broke back to level the set at two games all, but with the big mistake still biting her, she dropped her serve again to fall 5-2.

Badosa entered this quarterfinal with scar tissue she’s been trying to heal ever since she returned to tennis. In the last eight of the 2024 US Open against Emma Navarro, she had a 5–1 lead in the second set after losing the first. She lost six matches in a row and said, Rafael-Nadal style, that she had “made a disaster.” Navarro herself said she didn’t believe a third set was coming as she couldn’t afford to lose another match.

“I came in, I wanted to play my best game. I think I did that,” Badosa said in court.

“A year ago I was here with my back and didn’t know if I should retire from this sport,” she said.

Badosa had once been the world no. 2 and had won the WTA 1000 tournament in Indian Wells, California 12 months ago in Melbourne. The back injury, a stress fracture in her lower spine, seemed like it might be too much to overcome. .

Throughout last season, she balanced rehab with match play, not knowing how far her back could take her. She was given a series of cortisone injections, suggested by doctors as a last resort, which had little effect at first. She reached the quarterfinals of the US Open. She lost it. Another quarter-final loss at the 2021 French Open, where she fell just short losing 8–6 in a third set, also stuck.

Badosa said she was very nervous about trying to earn the match, especially since she had lost a set and a break against Gauff in China in October. She told herself that if she served well, she would have a decent chance of getting over the line.

“Just try to focus on yourself, throw the ball correctly, do all the techniques,” she said.

“I stopped thinking a little bit about Coco and the fight and the whole atmosphere and I was with myself.”

The scar tissue still showed before the final game, first in a missed driving volley at the top of the net from which she escaped. It showed again when she tried to serve the match for the first time at 5-2. Gauff grabbed the game and served at 3-5 down. Then she stole a point she should have lost when Badosa hit an overhead right to her racket. before holding to put the pressure back on the Spaniard.

This time Badosa resisted it. She hit two aces and allowed Gauff to grab just a single point in the final game. When it was over, she dropped to her knees, then made her way to the net, where a disappointed Gauff was waiting. The demons from New York had been cast out.

When it was over, the numbers told the story. Gauff had six double faults and 35 unforced errors on her groundstrokes. Badosa had just two double faults and 20 unforced errors from the ground; she forced 22 errors out of Gauff, compared to 17.

Gauff said she felt like at the US Open she was playing without any solutions to solve her problem. She felt stagnant or even walking backwards.

Now, she said, she knows what to work on and how to do it. Her serve and forehand aren’t perfect, but she’s seen enough improvement to feel like she’s on the right track.

“So I’m going to continue to work on it, continue to work on playing aggressively,” she said. “Even though I lost today, I feel like I’m on an upward trajectory.

She can take more comfort in moving a round further than she did the last two Grand Slams. But since she won the WTA Tour Finals in November, she is not playing Grand Slams to reach the quarterfinals. She arrives and plans to be alive for the last weekend. She will have to wait until the French Open in May to get another chance at that.

Before then, she will have the chance to prove that her remarkable 22-2 streak between the US Open and this defeat is sustainable progress, rather than another masterful overcoming of a fundamental problem that still lacks a healthy solution.

(Top photo: Getty Images)