Badosa trends in Spain after US Open loss to Gauff

Here is what the Spanish press is telling us today, outlet by outlet. According to France24, Coco Gauff beat Paula Badosa 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) in the US Open second round, in a touch under two hours, to reach the third round. The Spanish news agency EFE ran the same result as a headline, confirming Badosa's exit as a genuine national news item rather than a stray sports note. If you have been watching Badosa's name rise on Google Trends in Spain today, that defeat is the most likely reason, though we should be honest that no source we found explicitly links the search spike to the match: it is the timing that lines up.

France24 adds some context that explains why the loss stings a little more. Before Wednesday's win, Gauff (22) had lost five of her eight previous meetings with Badosa (28, born in Manhattan), so the American turned around a head-to-head that had been going the Spaniard's way. Next up for Gauff in the third round, France24 notes, is another Spanish player, Cristina Bucsa.

The elimination lands only two days after a first-round match that OkDiario described in almost cinematic terms. Per OkDiario, Badosa saw off Daria Kasatkina 6-1, 6-4 in a contest that began on Tuesday 1 September and finished on Wednesday 2 September, stretching past 24 hours in total: play was pushed back four hours, then stopped for more than two by rain, then held over to the next day while Badosa sat two points from victory. One detail no other outlet dwells on: OkDiario reports Kasatkina saved eight match points across the two days before folding on the ninth, with the final ten minutes played on the Wednesday.

Why does any of this resonate in Spain right now? Because Badosa is in the middle of a comeback story. El País published an interview with her on 2 September under the headline "Quiero ser la de antes del caos" ("I want to be the player I was before the chaos"), framed around her return from injury and her goals for the rest of 2026. ESPN Deportes recalls how badly 2025 went, with chronic back pain limiting her to just two matches after Wimbledon and dropping her WTA ranking from 12th to 25th. Artículo 14 offers the more hopeful footnote: in July 2026 she won her first WTA 125 title in two years in Båstad, a result that moved her up 26 places. Her exact ranking heading into this US Open is reported inconsistently across outlets, so we will leave that figure alone until it is firmly confirmed.

Sources : France24, EFE, OkDiario, El País, ESPN Deportes, Artículo 14, Google Trends.