Maria Sakkari news: Greek reveals why she was concerned ahead of Paula Badosa clash

WTA Tour
Maria Sakkari - Indian Wells 2022

Although Maria Sakkari wasn’t worried about her semi finals record ahead of her match with reigning champion Paula Badosa at the Indian Wells Masters, she was slightly concerned of the Spaniard’s different style of play.

Before the BNP Paribas Masters, Sakkari managed to reach the semi finals in seven of her last 10 tournaments, but had only gone on to appear in two finals.

However, she managed to beat her Spanish opponent 6-2, 4-6, 6-1 to earn a place in the final of the competition where she will face Iga Swiatek who is on course to win back-to-back WTA 1000 titles.


“I’ll be deadly honest that I never, ever thought about it, I have a lot of people around me telling me about the semi finals and that I was not able to get over this hurdle,” the Greek told the WTA website.

“But I never, ever thought about it because I was always very confident and had a lot of belief that I would just get over it soon and it clicked I guess.

“I was very concerned before the match because Paula is playing differently than the other girls, she has a very heavy game, she obviously loves this tournament because she won it six months ago.”

Even though she managed to come out of the match victorious, the 26-year-old from Athens admitted it was no easy feat.

Sakkari said: “I had full faith and I believed in myself every single moment.

“But I think I was just being a little bit too passive in a couple of games, then I tried to be more aggressive but I was still a break down and it was tough to come back because she was playing really good in her service games.

“But then even though I lost the second set, the way I lost it was by playing aggressive, which helped me a lot on the third set.”

Sakkari will face world No 4 Swiatek in the final of the BNP Paribas Open later today.

Iga Swiatek Maria Sakkari Paula Badosa

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