Paula Badosa’s resurgent season hit a brief scare on Tuesday before she powered through it to keep her winning streak alive. Fresh off a WTA 125 title in Bastad last week, the Spaniard carried that momentum into Romania, racing to a 4-1 lead in the first set against fourth seed Anhelina Kalinina. However, she left the court soon enough for a medical timeout over an inner thigh issue. 

She came back with her leg bandaged, and for a few games looked thrown off by the interruption, dropping the next two. She steadied things quickly enough, breaking to move ahead 5-3 and closing out the opener on serve. From there the match was largely a formality, and she wrapped up the win in 90 minutes, 6-3, 6-1, breaking Kalinina’s serve three more times in the second set alone. She’ll face Russian qualifier Alevtina Ibragimova next, who reached this round by beating Dominika Salkova for her first-ever WTA main-draw win.

That kind of scare carries extra weight for Badosa specifically, because of how much her career has already been shaped by injury.

A stress fracture in her back around the 2023 Rome Open sidelined her for most of that season, with doctors telling her at the time that continuing to play at all would be difficult. She fought her way back to form in 2024, and carried that into a semifinal run at the 2025 Australian Open. Then a tendon issue in her hip, which started bothering her that February and worsened around Wimbledon, developed into a torn labrum that derailed the rest of her season. She fell out of the top 100 to start 2026 as a result.

That history is exactly why a routine physio call, even one as minor as Tuesday’s, is never really routine for Badosa anymore.

Her run in Iasi extends her current streak to six straight victories, her best since the Washington Open title she won in August 2024. This streak was eventually snapped by Jelena Ostapenko at the Canada Open.

The streak started with her first trophy since that Washington win, a title in Bastad won without dropping a set, beating seeded players Emiliana Arango and Yulia Putintseva before closing it out against Simona Waltert in the final. Though that was a WTA 125 event rather than a full tour-level title, it’s clearly carried real momentum into Iasi, pushing her season record to 22-15, her strongest mark in years after working through injury and a form slump.

That trophy meant enough to Badosa that she said so directly afterward.

“This one means more than a trophy,” she wrote on social media after lifting it. “Thanks to everyone for the support I get through this journey.”

That same run is now carrying weight far beyond the Bastad trophy itself.

Badosa’s Run Now Doubles as a US Open Qualification Bid

The US Open’s main draw entry deadline falls on July 20, and Badosa’s run through this WTA 250 event in Iasi is central to her plan of cracking the top 100 in time to secure direct entry into the year’s final Grand Slam. Beating Kalinina moved her up four spots to No. 111 in the live rankings, and every round she survives from here pushes her closer.

Reaching the semifinals would place her provisionally at No. 99. Making the final, or winning the title outright, would put her comfortably back inside the top 100.

Badosa wasn’t the only Spaniard to open with a win in Romania, either. Kaitlin Quevedo marked her own top-100 debut with a 6-3, 6-1 win over Gabriela Ruse. The rest of the Spanish contingent had a tougher day, though: qualifier Leyre Romero fell to Panna Udvardy in three sets, and wild card Sara Sorribes lost to Anna Bondar in straight sets.

That draw keeps moving quickly regardless of how the rest of the field fares. Badosa’s own path to the top 100 continues Thursday, July 16, when she faces Ibragimova in the second round. The tournament’s quarterfinals follow on July 17, semifinals on the 18th, and the final on the 19th, one day before the US Open cutoff, meaning her ranking situation could be fully resolved before she even leaves Romania.