Paula Badosa has blasted critics who’ve suggested her struggles on the court are because of the tennis star’s ongoing relationship with ATP ace Stefanos Tsitsipas.

Badosa has endured a mixed year so far, with a steady rise up the rankings punctuated by several surprise defeats on the WTA tour.

Similarly, the Spainiard’s relationship with Tsitsipas has been just as stop-start, with the pair originally going public in the summer of 2023, before revealing they’d split in May this year.

Despite this, the duo were spotted together just days after the announcement, with an official reunion confirmed shortly after.

Acknowledging the criticisms linking her love life to a drop in form, Badosa told La Vanguardia: “Criticism is never easy to deal with, although sometimes we find it funny because people don’t realise that we are two people who share the same passion.

“Sometimes, apart from separately, we also train together, so in the end we train as much or more than anyone else.”

Badosa looked somewhat back to her best at the recent Wimbledon Championships, where the world No.65 reached the round-of-16, before losing to 19th seed Donna Vekic.

And the 26-year-old insists having a relationship with someone in the same profession is helping drive improvements in her game.

Badosa added: “I could understand this criticism of distraction more if it were with a person from another world, but being two athletes with a very clear objective, what I think is that people don’t even know what they are judging.”

However, Badosa has admitted she and Tsitsipas are now keen to keep their fling more private going forward.

She commented: “Personally, what bothers me the most is that people talk about other people’s realities. I can understand criticism of my professional side, of my tennis, of whether I lose or win, but linking that to something personal seems disrespectful to me.

“He already explained and I have nothing else to say, I mean, it’s our private life. I think one of the things that we didn’t like is that it was very public, so now we want to keep it to ourselves.

“We know it’s not going to be easy because we are two public people so people will ask, but we want to keep it more to ourselves.”