The low point, says Maria Sakkari, came in May at Roland Garros.
Facing a 138th-ranked wild card in Frenchwoman Elsa Jacquemot, the Greek star was summarily dismissed, 6-3, 7-6(4), in the first round. It was her third consecutive opening-round loss on the red clay of Paris, where only four years ago she was a point away from the title match.
Sakkari, 30, recalls the painful aftermath: A tough, tearful conversation with her coach, Tom Hill, back at her hotel.
“I just couldn’t play because of my nerves,” said Sakkari. “Losing again in another first round, not being where I want to be, I was crying, I was devastated.”
Long one of the WTA Tour’s fittest players, Sakkari has been searching for the kind of form that saw her notch a tour-best nine Top 10 wins in 2021; reach WTA 1000 finals in Indian Wells in 2022 and 2024; and play her way into the semis of the year-end WTA Finals in 2022. It’s been a tough slog, one rife with doubt. But after parting ways with Hill in February 2024, then rehiring him in April 2025, Sakkari appears to have a new lease on life.
“I think it’s just the fact that I found balance,” she said earlier this month at the Cincinnati Open. “I’m a lot happier than I was before.”
She’s sure been all smiles thus far in Flushing Meadows, where she’s through to the third round of the US Open for the first time since 2021, when she went all the way to the final four. Some of that happiness stems from the everyday presence of her sister, Amanda, and her mother, Angeliki, a former Top-50 player.
“I’ve been enjoying my time on the court, off the court,” she said.
Sakkari says she and Hill have been busy working on her toss and service motion, as well as her return game on the second serve, something that cost her dearly in a second-round, 7-6(2), 7-6(5) loss to eventual runner-up Jasmine Paolini in Cincinnati.
“I’m a quick learner,” she says, “so he has a good student.”
Hill has been stressing the importance of her net game, too. Take her first- and second-round wins this week at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (def. Tatjana Maria, 6-3, 6-2; def. Anna Bondar, 6-3, 6-1). Hill was charting each and every one of Sakkari’s sorties to the net, successful or not. The goal was to get to 20 per match, just the kind of number she was hitting when she climbed to a career-high No. 3 in 2022.
But her ranking, currently No. 64, is the furthest thing from her mind at the moment.
“I don’t even check, if I’m honest; 60, 65, I don’t really care,” she said. “The only reason I would care right now is just to get into tournaments. It might take three weeks, it might take 10 months, it might take 18 months to get back to where it was. The only thing I know is that I’m doing the right things to get back there, and I’m really enjoying where I am right now. I’m nowhere near where I want to be, but I’m happy. That’s the most important thing.”
The real test for Sakkari will be just how long she can maintain that patience. After all, at heart, she’s a cutthroat competitor who doesn’t take well to repeated losses.
“I was so impatient going into this season because I thought that I was going to get back to the Top 10 in no time,” she observed. “But it doesn’t work like that. It took me some time to realize that getting there, it’s not easy. I just told myself that it’s going to take time. Tom has helped me a lot, to just be patient and do the right things: Let’s put in the work, let’s be the underdog in most of the matches and go out there and attack.”
