Spartan Sakkari’s journey to the top 20 (Part 1 of 4)
AGONAsport’s Andrew Stamas looks at Greek tennis star Maria Sakkari’s gradual rise to the top 20, in the first of a four-part series.
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Maria Sakkari was born in Athens on July 25, 1995. Her father, Konstantinos, hails from Sparta and her mother, Angeliki, was a former top 50 tennis player. Furthermore, Angeliki’s father, Dimitrios Kanellopoulos, was also a tennis player and coach in Athens. Despite being the daughter of Angeliki Kanellopoulou (the best Greek player of all-time at that point), Sakkari played numerous different sports growing up and was never pressured to play tennis. In fact, since her parents knew how difficult life as a professional tennis player was, they did not want their daughter to take that path as well. In spite of that, Sakkari liked tennis the most out of the many sports she played, and always begged her parents to play more and more. Eventually, Sakkari played a tournament in Lamia when she was 11 years old, and reached the final from qualifying. It was then that her family realized her potential, and from then on they started to get more serious about their girl pursuing her dream of becoming a tennis player.
After that, Sakkari started to enter junior tournaments abroad. Her junior results were very good for Greece’s standards, but they were nothing spectacular and Sakkari was nowhere near being one of the top players in the world for her age group. On June 6, 2011, the Greek entered the WTA rankings for the first time. Then, 15-year-old Sakkari was ranked 1090 in the world and soon began to focus more on professional events. Upon achieving a career-high ITF junior (U18) ranking of 203 in the world in August of that year, she stopped competing in junior tournaments altogether.
Sakkari made a smooth transition to the senior tour, making her first final at a pro tournament in Athens that September. This was at the $10,000 tournament level, which was the lowest level of professional tennis back then. She then ended her season in early October, ranked just outside the top 700. She finished the calendar year ranked 702 in the world as a 16-year-old, and seemed to be setting herself up for a big push up the rankings in 2012. However, that would not be the case. Sakkari did reach another tournament final, but ended the year on a four-match losing streak, and finished the 2012 season ranked 627.
The Greek then went on to lose her first three matches in 2013, extending her losing streak to seven matches. She was then able to pick up a few wins and reach the semifinals at an Israeli tournament in late February, after not having won a match for almost five months. In April, she played Fed Cup for the second year in a row, with Greece once again suffering relegation. Also for the second consecutive year, Sakkari failed to win a match for her country and at this point held an 0-9 record for Greece in Fed Cup play.
It was clear that something had to change, as Sakkari was no longer making any progress. After graduating high school a few months later, she moved to Barcelona where she would train at a tennis academy with a new coach (German Puentes). Having often blamed the Greek school system for not allowing athletics to properly focus on their sports during their high school years, this was a new chance for Sakkari to get a fresh start and put 100% into her tennis career without having other obligations anymore. This move to Spain clearly paid dividends, as the Greek made two finals and another two semifinals between September and November, and therefore improved her ranking (which had fallen to 796) to 544 by mid-December.
The first few months of 2014 were mediocre at best, although Sakkari did finally earn her first Fed Cup victories in February. Nevertheless, everything started to click in mid-April. Sakkari reached another tournament final (this time in Heraklion, Crete), beating a fellow Greek prospect in Valentini Grammatikopoulou in the semifinals of that event. This was a significant win, as Grammatikopoulou had won each of their three previous matches against each other. The very next week, Sakkari went one better by winning the whole tournament in Heraklion. Finally, after losing her first five pro tour finals, the Greek established herself as the champion and not the runner-up.
Sakkari also fared extremely well in her next two events, making another final in one, and winning another title in the other (and doing so without dropping a set) at $10,000 tournaments in Sweden in May. In June, she would go on to win yet another $10,000 tournament, this time in Serbia. It was clear from this sudden success in $10,000 tournaments that the Greek was ready to try her luck at a higher level. She then entered the qualifying rounds of a $25,000 tournament in Torun, Poland. Not only did she win two matches in straight sets to qualify for the tournament, but Sakkari made it all the way to the final without dropping a set. Although she lost that match, she would go on to play two tournaments in Finland (following a few weeks of rest), winning one of them (without dropping a set) and reaching the final of the other, with both tournaments being at the $10,000 level. It was now August and within the last four months, Sakkari’s ranking had skyrocketed from 570 to 289. To put things into perspective, Sakkari improved her ranking from 796 to 289 less than a year after relocating and setting up her new base in Barcelona.
Injuries temporarily stalled Sakkari’s progress later in 2014, and she ended the year ranked 286 in the world, after having never previously finished a season inside the top 500. In 2015, Sakkari was making slow but steady progress for the first few months of the season, which included winning another two $10,000 tournaments in Heraklion without dropping a set either time. She then led Greece to the promotional play-off at the Fed Cup, coming up short against Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki, who was ranked number five in the world at the time and was a former world number one. In May, Sakkari played two tournaments and was extremely successful in both. She first made the semifinals of a $50,000 tournament in Tunisia, before earning her first title at the $25,000 level, on the clay of Slovenia. Another semifinal at a $25,000 tournament, this time in Belarus in June, would propel Sakkari’s WTA ranking to 210 in the world. This meant that the Greek would be able to make her Grand Slam qualifying debut at the US Open later that summer.
Having spent the summer competing in a series of clay court tournaments (with varying degrees of success), Sakkari showed up to the qualifying tournament of the 2015 US Open ranked 206 in the world. Coming in as an unseeded player who spent most of her summer (and her season in general) playing on clay courts, few would have expected the Greek to do much in New York. The draw did not help either, as Sakkari was set to face Latvia’s Anastasija Sevastova in the first round. Sevastova had come out of retirement earlier that year, and was competing in her first Grand Slam tournament in almost three years. Having been ranked in the top 40 in 2011, Sevastova was showing signs of that form again after being a semifinalist at a WTA tournament in Brazil just four weeks earlier. Against all odds, Sakkari won the match in straight sets and advanced to play fourth-seeded An-Sophie Mestach of Belgium (world number 102) in the second round of qualifying. The Greek dug deep and pulled out a three-set win over the Belgian. Suddenly, Sakkari was one match away from being in the main draw of the US Open and becoming the first Greek player to qualify for a Grand Slam in two years.
Sakkari’s next opponent was Croatia’s Petra Martic, another former top 50 player who was heavily favored to qualify. However, Sakkari once again pulled off an upset, taking the match in straight sets to reach the main draw of the US Open just one month after her 20th birthday. Although she would lose in the first round of the main draw, Sakkari’s US Open qualification started to put Greek tennis back on the map. She finished the year ranked 169 in the world, and was setting her sights on the 2016 season. These were exciting times, and Greek tennis fans had plenty to look forward to. Sakkari showed that she was ready. She showed that she was ready to continue her ascent up the rankings. She showed that she was ready to compete in more Grand Slams. She showed that she was ready to crack the top 100. She showed that she belonged on the main tour.
