Maria Sakkari demonstrated the ability to start the venture inside the New York bubble on Saturday (22/08) local time with a dominant 6-1, 6-3 win in the first round of the Cincinnati Open (Western & Southern Open) against the host’s tennis player, Cori Gauff.
After a shock defeat to Kristyna Pliskova in the first round of the Palermo Open a few weeks ago, Greek national Sakkari put on a convincing 65-minute performance at the Grandstand, USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in the first meeting against US sensationalist Gauff.
Facing just one break point in the two sets, Sakkari won nearly 70 percent of his service points and broke Gauff twice in each set to advance to the second half to face either Yulia Putintseva or Zhang Shuai.
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“I thought I had a really good match. I had one game in Palermo, but for me, it doesn’t count. “It wasn’t even a match the way I played at the time,” said Maria Sakkari.
“Coming back with my abilities, that’s really important and I got a lot of confidence from this win.”
Although he has never met Gauff before, Sakkari has played an important role in Gauff’s career to date. Sakkari’s withdrawal from the tournament in Linz in October last season saw Gauff enter the main draw as a lucky loser and Gauff won five games en route to winning the first ever WTA singles tournament title of his career. But this time Sakkari didn’t make it the easy way.
In this match, despite the success of the two players’ serve under 50 percent, Sakkari was the better player to protect his second serve and dominated when he landed the first serve of all match.
Overall, Gauff only hit 6 winners with 24 unforced errors, while Sakkari shot 14 winners with 21 unfirced errors.
“I think my serve was one of the things that worked really well today (22/08) and gave me quite a few points for free, if I can call it that,” added Maria Sakkari.
“The hardest thing is to follow the tactics all the time as usual, but I’m very satisfied because after a while, I can compete at a pretty high level.”
“I like the way I compete. It’s hard enough to come back after a long break to find your fighting strength and strength on the pitch. So, I’m really happy to find him today. I’ve always played well in the US. I love the US and I’m really happy to be back.”
