Maria Sakkari knocked out Volvo Car Open defending champion Kiki Bertens in a straight sets stunner to book her spot into her first quarterfinal of the year.
Maria Sakkari is a Greek professional tennis player. She achieved her career-high singles ranking of No. 29 on 24 September 2018. Her highest WTA doubles ranking is No. 293, achieved on 16 November 2015.
Maria Sakkari, 2014 Bella Cup. Her mother Angeliki Kanellopoulou was also a top 50 player.
Maria Sakkari made her debut for the Greece Fed Cup team in 2012 and has a Fed Cup win-loss record of 10–16 to date. She made her Grand Slam debut at the 2015 US Open.
The No.15 seeded Greek player came into the green clay of Charleston looking to jumpstart her season after failing to win back-to-back matches since her Australian Open third round run.
Now, she's done just that, and in impressive fashion too: after edging past Conny Perrin in the first round, Sakkari dropped just three games against another former Charleston champion, Andrea Petkovic, en route to a 6-3, 6-0 win.
After scraping through the first set, Sakkari was in full flight in the second, breaking early to lead 2-1 and batting away three break back chances from Bertens. A final break to love sealed the match for Sakkari, who fired 19 winners and 27 unforced errors against her opponent's 23 and 38.
On the other hand, Kiki Bertens is a Dutch tennis player who turned professional in 2009. Her highest WTA singles ranking is No. 6, which she reached on 1 April 2019. Her career high in doubles is world No. 16, achieved in April 2018.
To date, she has won eight singles and ten doubles titles on the WTA Tour including 2018 Western & Southern Open. Bertens is widely regarded as a clay-court specialist but also is successful on hard courts. She is coached by Raemon Sluiter.
