Spanish star Paula Badosa has revealed she was told to stop playing tennis by doctors before returning to the top of the women's game this year.

The former world No2 endured a difficult 2023 that saw her miss the Australian Open due to an adductor injury before she pulled out of the French Open with a stress fracture of her back. 

Badosa rushed back to play at Wimbledon, but was forced to retire in the second round prior to taking an extended break from the sport.

Badosa has now opened up on how bad her injuries got, explaining that she needed daily injections just to get through day-to-day life.

'They [doctors] told me that if I had been out of action for more than a year, there would have been no chance of playing high-level tennis again,' Badosa said on Cadena SER.

'And for me, not playing at a high level didn't make sense. They told me that the only solution was almost to stop. They told me to use injections, which are a barrier that covers up the pain. 

'In the end you are putting shit, corticosteroids and everything, in your body... so your physique changes a lot. You go from being an athlete to not being one. You swell up and gain more weight. The injections were difficult for me.'

Despite being advised to put her racquet down, Badosa made a comeback at the start of 2024 and has not looked back. 

She has since made the fourth round of Wimbledon, before winning the Washington Open earlier this month and then reaching the semi-finals of the Cincinnati Open last week to return to the top 30 in the WTA rankings.

But Badosa, 26, has admitted she still experiences a lot of physical pain on a daily basis.

'The strange thing was that I had to inject myself so much,' she continued. 'For them, my recovery was to stop for a year, come back, at most one injection and forget about it... But it hurt and the injections didn't help.

'The good process is the one I'm going through now, when I'm competing at the highest level. But there are days when I wake up and say, "Oh my God, everything hurts". My back hurts a little more than usual, but I treat myself for a few hours and that's it. It was the process I had to go through since January, but I don't know why my body wasn't responding that way.

'When you get older you become more careful with everything... I feel like an old lady (she joked). There are days when I wake up and say to myself "my hips and back are stiff". On work days, and even on days off, physiotherapy is sacred.'

Badosa now has to be more selective with the tournaments that she plays, and she skipped the Olympics to turn her attention to the hard-court season ahead of the US Open.

Her strategy has paid off as she has picked up valuable ranking points in Washington and Cincinnati in recent weeks.

She continued her fine form earlier this week when she won a New York exhibition event dubbed US Open Mixed Madness - and £250,000 in prize money - alongside her boyfriend and fellow tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Badosa and Tsitsipas first got together in May 2023 before announcing they had split in May this year. 

However, just three weeks later, the couple rekindled their romance, and they are now flourishing as a duo on the court as well.

Badosa has had one of the best years of her career after battling back from the brink of stopping the sport, and is now targeting her best-ever run at the US Open.

Her record in New York - the city where she was born - is a disappointing one, but she believes she can put that right when the final major of the year gets underway next week.

'You ask me about the US Open and I say... I've never made it past the second round,' she said.

'I've been playing well... I've never done it before on this tour and I've decided not to complain about the conditions anymore.'