When Paula Badosa was awarded the WTA's Comeback Player of the Year at the end of the 2024 season, it was a fitting tribute to a talent who had spent the year getting back on track after 10 months watching from the sidelines. But in the three short weeks since the start of 2025, the honour now looks more like a gauntlet the player has thrown down: that was just the beginning. 

After scything her way through her side of the Australian Open draw, Badosa has gone further in a Grand Slam than any other time in her career, reaching the semi-final after beating No3 seed Coco Gauff in straight sets and setting up a meeting with world No1 Aryna Sabalenka on Thursday. But while many tennis stars might view that as an achievement in its own right, it is one made all made all the more remarkable by the backdrop of the past few years. 

Once ranked world No2 and tipped as a Grand Slam contender, Badosa tumbled down the rankings at out of the top 100 after falling victory to persistent injury. After retiring in the second round of Wimbledon in 2023, the Spaniard then failed to play another match for the remainder of the year, as she struggled with a particularly problematic back injury. 

When she returned to the tour in January the following year, it took some time for Badosa herself to reveal how serious things had been. 

'The doctors told me I might not be able to continue,' Badosa shared during last year's Wimbledon after defeating No14 seed Daria Kasatkina to book her place in the fourth round. But rather than heed their advice, Badosa has instead chosen to manage her ongoing chronic pain with cortisol injections - solutions that will help her keep pace with the pressures of the WTA, but at a great personal toll. 

'There are days when I feel worse than others, but it’s manageable,' she continued. 'There are other days when it’s tough, but I also control a lot of the tournaments I play, the days I train and the days I have off. I may take more days off than I would like, but that’s the only way.'

Putting her head down and seeing out grass court season, by the time Badosa reached the Washington Open in August, she was back in the top 50 ranked players for the first time in 47 weeks. By the end of the year, she was ranked 12th in the world, having risen from as low as 140th in May. 

By Badosa's own admission, there is no other way she would have it, playing through pain and forcing herself to continue where other players might understandably falter. 

The 27-year-old told Mail Sport in July that she is a 'tennis freak', whose idea of relaxation during major tournaments is watching others play and working on her game. When featuring on Netflix's short-lived Break Point series following the two tours, her description of the game was redolent of an addict describing their fix. 

'It's a drug,' she shared, staring down the lens with utter certainty. 'The sport is a drug, winning big titles, winning big matches.'

To Badosa, keeping a healthy sense of perspective on her tennis addiction - as well as the nightmare battles with injury that left her trapped on the couch, watching her peers succeed while she was immobile - is paramount. The 27-year-old is intensely focused on the mental aspect of her game, and has gone as far as enrolling in a one-year psychology course at Harvard this year in a bid to engage further with the subject. 

For a player as in tune with this dimension of the sport, it's no oversized assumption that Badosa's personal life has played a key role in helping her to recapture her pre-injury form over the past year. And while there have been moments of tumult in her relationship with fellow player Stefanos Tsitsipas, the former world No 3 has evolved into one of Badosa's most important cheerleaders as she continues her impressive return to her best tennnis. 

Inevitably known as 'Tsitsidosa', the two players were first linked in June 2023, and within weeks, had declared their love for one another in post-match press conferences, launched a joint Instagram account named for their relationship, and refused to skimp on intimate details for clamouring members of the public. 

After her first-round tie at Wimbledon of that year, Badosa used a discussion about the importance of manifesting Grand Slam success to share that earlier that year she had a sex dream about her partner-to-be winning the Australian Open. 

But less than a year later, the comet that had burned bright fizzled out when the pair announced the end of their relationship with a boiler-plate statement which stressed that they were better as 'friends with immense mutual respect'. 

Or were they? Fans were scarcely recovered from that blow when just three weeks after publicly announcing the break-up, Tsitsidosa rose from the ashes. 

'We are very similar in our way of being,' Badosa revealed in a joint interview on the eve of the 2024 French Open. 'Since we are dedicated to the same thing, we empathise a lot with each other.'

Indeed, the pair have previously shared that tennis 'comes first', with both players praising the other's on-court successes whether playing at the same tournament or halfway across the world from one another. 

Such is the importance of their relationship to one another that Tsitsipas' mother revealed in an interview last year that she had been involved in urging her son to get back together with the Spaniard. 

'There was a difficult time when they broke up, but now they're in love,' Julia Apostoli shared on a Greek talk show in September last year. 'I was on Paula's side, we talked and that's why they found each other again.' 

But while normally their on-court commitments stop them from being able to support one another from the stands, this year's Australian Open saw Tsitsipas playing a new role in the relationship - one closer to the controversial 'tennis WAGs' who so often soak up media attention during Grand Slam events. 

After suffering a shock defeat to NextGen talent Alex Michelsen, the Greek player was able to watch Badosa a number of times from the stands, offering advice and support - although not all of this was received well. 

Tsitsipas attracted his girlfriend's ire during her third-round clash with Marta Kostyuk for appearing to tell her to 'calm down' with plaintive hand gestures from high above the court. Badosa, unamused, gestured with her racquet in apparent suggestion that he come down and play himself. 

The 26-year-old later appeared in her coaching corner - and will likely be watching her semi-final in earnest after returning to Athens to prepare for his next tournament. 

But while Badosa will have to play the biggest Grand Slam match of her career without her boyfriend watching on inside Rod Laver Arena, she will enjoy the company of a woman she has referred to as her 'best friend' - on the other side of the net.  

Sabalenka and Badosa have long been close, with the Belarusian star describing her as her 'soulmate' after the pair met at an exhibition event ahead of Indian Wells in 2022. Both ranked inside the top 10 for the first time, Badosa explained on the Inside-In podcast that facing one another during a respite from the intensely competitive WTA tour had revealed they had 'very similar personalities' - and instantly connected. 

'We're both very, very competitive, but at the same time we know how to separate things,' Badosa added. 'It's very nice for me having a friend on tour because it's very tough to find.'

Gushing tributes to one another in press conferences and on social media - as well as updates from glamorous international dinner dates - followed. But the pair's friendship was most keenly put to the test when the pair were drawn against one another at 2024's Miami Open. 

Facing off with one another court was no rarity, with the pair meeting four times in the previous three years ahead of Sabalenka's de facto home tournament - but the circumstances were acutely different. 

Days before their meeting in Florida, Sabalenka's former partner Konstantin Koltsov had fallen to his death in an apparent suicide at a Miami hotel, and despite no longer being involved with her former boyfriend of three years, the 26-year-old was plunged into grief. 

'My heart is broken,' Sabalenka had shared in a brief but poignant statement on social media in the grim aftermath of the tragedy. But doggedly determined, Sabalenka opted not to withdraw from the competition. 

As one of her closest friends on the tour, Badosa became an important support for Sabalenka, practising with her before their match-up, before taking to the court for their second-round meeting dressed in black - like her opponent - in solidarity. 

'I wasn't surprised at all by (Sabalenka's) play,' Badosa said after the match, which Sabalenka claimed in straight sets. 'She's a very, very strong woman, strong personality, you can see it on the court.

'It wasn't very comfortable to play my best friend in this situation. Honestly both of us are pretty strong mentally, we're strong women, I proved it, she proved it.' 

Since last March, Badosa and Sabalenka have met another two times, with the Belarusian taking the bragging rights at both the Stuttgart Open and the French Open, when the Spaniard was forced to retire. 

'It's tough to play your best friend,' Sabalenka shared after her victory in Germany. 'We're good to separate things. During the match, we're opponents and I'm trying not to watch too much of the other side, focus on myself, and bring my best game.' 

Ahead of these last two weeks in Melbourne, it might have been Badosa with the greater need for focus should she wish to swat away the mighty Sabalenka in an arena that she has made her second home after back-to-back victories. 

But with her victory over Gauff, widely seen as Sabalenka's primary danger Down Under before the first ball was tossed in the air last Sunday, Badosa is quietly proving that no player on the tour should write her off as an empty threat. 

Badosa also took the opportunity to scour her most recent quarter-final - an unedifying straight sets collapse against Emma Navarro at last year's US Open - from collective memories. Doing so against an underdog opponent or a surprise package like her round-of-16 opponent Olga Danilovic, that might provide a useful mental boost for a player, but versus a rival like Gauff it should carry significant weight ahead of staring down a three-time Grand Slam winner in Sabalenka. 

Other wins in Melbourne too have put her in a strong position to handle what the bombastic returning champion intends to throw at her. Badosa navigated an important comeback from 5-2 down in the second set against Danilovic, and praised herself for handling the 'tricky' points when there was little to separate the two competitors. 

Badosa had previously played her former close acquaintance Kostyuk, seeded 17th in the draw, in a tie laced with emotional pitfalls due to their earlier friendship. Kostyuk, who is Ukrainian, took issue with Badosa choosing to play doubles with Sabalenka in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion. The pair had last met in that fateful Wimbledon retirement of 2023, heaping further emotion onto of the third-round tie. 

Sabalenka, by contrast, blazed her usual trail through the draw in the hunt for her fourth major, but found herself curiously unstuck against Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in her quarter-final. If Badosa can unsettle her closest friend on the tour in a similar fashion, the Belarusian will have to dig even deeper than she did against the world No23.  

The reality of Badosa's chronic injuries mean that opportunities for making Grand Slam finals will be limited, with the player confessing last Spring that doctors had given her 'three to four years' left to play even with the injections she receives to allow her to carry on. 

But that, in turn, makes her an opponent to be feared. While Sabalenka has her own pressures as she looks to complete an Australian Open three-peat at Melbourne Park, Badosa is playing against the clock.