Former world No 2 Paula Badosa has declared herself injury-free and says she cannot wait to get into action at the Adelaide International.
Badosa is set to face Bernarda Pera in the opening round after the American earned her spot in the qualifying tournament.
If she can beat Pera, Badosa will be faced with the unenviable task of trying to stop No 2 seed Jessica Pegula in the round of 16.
Badosa admits that her complaint was a frustrating injury from which to recover.
The 26-year-old suffered a stress fracture in her back and was sidelined for the latter half of the 2023 season, and having slipped down to No 68, Badosa is ready to launch herself back up the rankings.
Badosa hopes that she will be able to quickly get back to her former level of play even if regaining her top ten ranking will take some time.
“I’ve never been more excited to come back to start the year,” Badosa told reporters.
“I want to get back to that level as soon as possible. I know it’s going to be tough at the beginning. It’s been a lot of months that I didn’t play.”
Badosa said that she had to learn not to try to force recovery from the kind of injury that she suffered.
“It’s an injury that you don’t have much under your control,” Badosa said.
“Because at the beginning I thought, oh, I do more hours of treatment, I do more hours of this or that and I’m going to heal faster. Then I learned that just having patience, try to let it heal on its own.
“But honestly it’s a very slow — I was going to say a bad word — but yeah, very slow process.”
Badosa added that she was at times over eager to return and would rush to get back on court only to find the pain would return.
“It was a very tough process, especially mentally for me to accept all this,” she said.
“As I always say, I love to play tennis. I love to compete.
“So all of a sudden one day I had to stop completely and started to have like a normal life — not even a normal life. I had to stay on the couch. so imagine how boring was that.”
Badosa says that her injury has given her an appreciation of what it means to be able to compete at this level.
“I think now maybe I will value a little bit more now being in every tournament, every match, every draw. I’m really excited to be here again,” Badosa said.
Badosa will feature in the evening session on day 1 of the Adelaide International.