The Spanish tennis player Paula Badosa, number 4 in the WTA classification, suffered this Tuesday in the first round of the US Open, but finally beat the Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko with a comeback after a tough and convoluted match of two hours and 31 minutes. minutes.
Number 87 in the world, Tsurenko sold his defeat against Badosa very dearly, who ended up taking the match 3-6, 7-6(4) and 6-3.
After deciding the second set in a sudden death, the Ukrainian had physical problems in her left arm during the third set and also left the court after the match with a limp.
Even so, the match was full of dangers for Badosa, who was very uncomfortable for much of the match and made 57 unforced errors (47 by the Ukrainian).
The Spaniard, who in 2019 and 2020 did not go beyond the first round at the US Open and who last year said goodbye in the second round, will face the winner of the confrontation between the Russian Varvara Gracheva in the next match and Croatian Petra Martic.
In a match played in the early afternoon and with annoying gusts of wind in her hometown (the Spaniard was born in New York when her parents were there for work), Badosa did not enter the match well and lost her first serve.
A Badosa who had problems with his serve, difficulty finding angles and an increasingly worrying accumulation of unforced errors did not seem at all loose on the court.
Badosa tried to warm up little by little, but Tsurenko, very solid from the bottom of the court, did not waver (1-3).
In the middle of the set, a small path to hope was opened for Badosa when he achieved his first "break" (3-3), which he crowned with a shout to cheer himself up.
But in the next game, Tsurenko broke the Spaniard's serve (3-4), secured her service later and finally won the first set from the rest in 44 minutes against a frustrated Badosa who couldn't find answers (3-6) .
The stats from the first set made it clear that he was far from his best (he made 22 unforced errors and only won 52% of his first serves).
Badosa urgently needed a reaction and got down to work.
With a cry of "yes!" that was heard throughout the court, the Spanish celebrated her "break" in the first game of the second set (1-0).
He tried to grow from that renewed confidence: his serve became more reliable, his forehand began to grow and Tsurenko also exhibited some doubts (3-1).
But starting at 4-3, the match entered a crazy and strange phase of five consecutive games that ended with five consecutive breaks of service and that condemned the second set to sudden death.
"What do I do? What do I do? Tell me!", shouted a distraught Badosa to her team at the end of a set in which she served twice to win the set without succeeding.
Already in the "tie break", Badosa was more serene than his rival, he dared to go up to the net and exploited the first signs of Tsurenko's fatigue to level the match.
In the final set, Badosa increased the solidity of her serve but the key moment came when, at 2-1 for the Spanish, Tsurenko began to have problems with her left arm.
The Ukrainian came to be treated by the tournament's physiotherapist but her performance on the court clearly dropped -then she also had problems with her legs- and Badosa, without losing her head, closed her long-suffering victory after a game full of cheats and with more of a fright
