Spartan Sakkari’s journey to the top 20 (Part 2 of 4)

AGONAsport’s Andrew Stamas looks at Greek tennis star Maria Sakkari’s gradual rise to the top 20, in the second of a four-part series.

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To view part one, click here.

Sakkari started the new season right where she left off in 2015. At the 2016 Australian Open, she passed through three rounds of qualifying to reach the main draw. Unlike at the US Open, this time she would also win her first match in the main draw, edging out China’s Yafan Wang in three sets. In the second round, Sakkari faced Spain’s Carla Suarez Navarro on Margaret Court Arena. The Spaniard, who was ranked 11 in the world at the time, came into the match as the overwhelming favorite. The Greek edged the Spaniard in the first set, but Suarez Navarro went on to win the match in three sets and later got to the quarterfinals in Melbourne. Despite the loss, this was another successful tournament for Sakkari overall. Not only did she win a set against a top player on one of tennis’ biggest stages (in addition to winning her first main draw match on the main tour), but her WTA ranking also improved. As a result of qualifying and reaching the second round in Melbourne, the Greek was at a new career-high ranking of 133 in the world.

The next few months were full of ups and downs for Sakkari, as she tried to establish herself on the WTA tour. Then, in April, Sakkari competed in the WTA Istanbul Cup. After qualifying for the main draw without dropping a set, Sakkari upset top-seeded Anna Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia in the first round, 6-2 6-3. Schmiedlova was ranked 34 in the world back then, making this by far the biggest win of Sakkari’s career at that point. The Greek eventually made the quarterfinals, and saw her ranking go up to 118 thereafter.

The weeks that followed that saw Sakkari with some mixed results. These included being runner-up at a $50,000+H tournament in France, losing in the first round of qualifying at the French Open, and being runner-up at a $50,000 tournament in Hungary. Sakkari then went to the qualifying of Wimbledon, having never stepped foot on a grass court before.

After the disappointment of failing to get past the first round of qualifying at the French Open, Sakkari was able to get back to winning ways at Wimbledon. She made an impressive grass court debut, crushing Russia’s Polina Leykina 6-0 6-0 in her first match. After winning her next two matches, Sakkari found herself in another Grand Slam main draw. There, she dominated China’s Saisai Zheng (world number 79) 6-3 6-2 to reach the second round. This win meant that the Greek would crack the WTA top 100, becoming just the fourth player from her country to ever do so. With that, she would also be guaranteed to play in the US Open main draw without having to go through qualifying. Her next opponent (at Wimbledon) would be none other than American Venus Williams, a five-time Wimbledon champion and the number eight player in the world at the time. Sakkari put up a tremendous fight, ultimately falling 7-5 4-6 6-3. The American eventually was a semifinalist at that year’s event, which showed how well Sakkari played to come so close against her.

The subsequent months saw few significant results for the Greek. She lost a lot of close matches, as she went 2-9 in three set matches from Wimbledon on. This included a first round three-set loss at the US Open. Sakkari also put up an impressive fight in Hong Kong, falling 6-4 6-4 to world number one Angelique Kerber of Germany. Nevertheless, Sakkari still finished the season at a new career-high ranking of 89 in the world, thus confirming her spot in the main draw of the 2017 Australian Open.

At the 2017 Australian Open, Sakkari earned a 6-0 6-4 win in the first round over Estonia’s Anett Kontaveit. She then faced 28th-seeded Alize Cornet of France, and the Greek prevailed 7-5 4-6 6-1, becoming the first Greek player to reach the third round of a Grand Slam since 2005. There, she fell in three sets to Croatia’s Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, who would go on to reach the semifinals at a Grand Slam for the first time since doing so at Wimbledon 1999.

Over the next few months, Sakkari failed to win consecutive matches at any tournament, and lost to Suarez Navarro in the first round of the French Open in straight sets. The time had come for another change, and after almost four years, Sakkari parted ways with German Puentes and left Barcelona. At first she was coached by Mark Petchey, a Brit who once coached his countryman Andy Murray on the men’s tour. After making the quarterfinals at the WTA event in Nottingham in her first tournament of the grass court swing, things seemed to be improving again for the Greek. This was her just her second career quarterfinal at a WTA tournament, and she needed to follow that up with a good result at Wimbledon to defend her points from the previous year. By this point, Sakkari’s ranking had already fallen out of the top 100, and a first round exit at Wimbledon would have seen her ranking drop even more.

At Wimbledon, Sakkari defeated two Czech players ranked inside the top 50 (Katerina Siniakova and Kristyna Pliskova) to make the third round. She would then fall in the third round in straight sets to Brit Johanna Konta, who was ranked seventh in the world and went on to reach the semifinals. Despite these positive signs on grass, Sakkari would not continue working with Petchey. She later announced that Swede Thomas Johansson, the winner of the 2002 Australian Open, would become her new coach and that Monte Carlo would become her new training base.

The 2017 US Open was Sakkari’s first big tournament with Johansson, and she began it by upsetting 24th-seeded Kiki Bertens of the Netherlands 6-3 6-4 in the first round. Following a straight-set win over Australia’s Arina Rodionova in the second round, Sakkari would once again face Venus Williams. This time, the match would take place on Arthur Ashe Stadium (the largest tennis stadium in the world), with the American being ranked ninth in the world. Williams won that match 6-3 6-4 (and ultimately reached the semifinals that tournament), but the Greek still moved up to a new career-high ranking of 82 in the world.

While Sakkari had a superb season at the Grand Slams (reaching the third round in three of the four), she had yet to replicate those results in other tour events. That was until a few weeks after the US Open, when she took part in the qualifying tournament of the 2017 Wuhan Open. Sakkari qualified for the main draw without dropping a set, and then came from behind to defeat Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva (world number 48) in three sets in the first round. It seemed like a successful tournament for the Greek, as Wuhan is a Premier 5 event, and therefore is one of the biggest tournaments outside of the four majors. Her next match was against world number six Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, a former world number one who had just won the title at the Premier tournament in Tokyo the previous week.

Two and a half years after Wozniacki pummeled the Greek in Fed Cup play, Sakkari earned a surprise 7-5 6-3 victory over the Dane. This was Sakkari’s first career top 10 win, as she became the first Greek player to defeat a top 10 opponent in over 12 years. Sakkari then followed this performance up with wins over Russia’s Elena Vesnina (world number 21) and Cornet (world number 42), winning both matches in straight sets to reach the semifinals. This marked the first time that a Greek player had reached a tour semifinal in almost six years, and the first time ever that it had been done in a tournament this big. Once again, Sakkari put Greek tennis back on the map. Although her run in Wuhan ended in the semifinals at the hands of eventual champion Caroline Garcia of France, Sakkari soon reached another new career-high ranking. After Wuhan, the Greek moved up from 80 to 50 in the WTA rankings. She would go on to finish the 2017 season ranked 52, having peaked at number 48 in mid-October.

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