Maria Sakkari exclusive: Rising from a ‘dark place’ ahead of WTA Finals and ready to ‘dominate’ in 2023

Maria Sakkari had a deal with her grandmother: if she qualified for the WTA Finals in Fort Worth, her grandmother would join her at the prestigious season finale.

It came down to the wire but Sakkari managed to punch her ticket to Texas with a heroic run to the Guadalajara final last week, which meant her mother, former top-50 player Angeliki Kanellopoulou, and her grandmother both got on a plane and flew from Athens, Greece all the way to Fort Worth to celebrate her making it through a difficult season together.

“I’m very glad and for me it’s a celebration for us, for the whole family to be here and even if she was losing the match today it’s already a celebration to be here, but even better if she wins the match.

“I told her, if you qualify, I will take my mum, her grandmother, and we’ll be all together. My mother used to travel with me, so she’s very aware of tennis, she’s watching all the matches.

“Maria promised her that if she will make the Finals, she has to have the passport to travel. So my mother said, ‘Okay, I have the passport ready, now it’s your turn to make it and we fly to Fort Worth’. It’s a great experience for her.”

Sakkari has been open about her mental struggles this season, and has spoken about the “dark days” she went through dealing with in the aftermath of her surge to a career-high No. 3 ranking during the spring.

“I had never experienced those things before,” Sakkari told Eurosport on Monday.

“It was a new situation for me this year because obviously coming from a country that is very small, you have all the expectations, all the eyes on you and then you feel like you have to perform every single week, so you’re going to tournaments thinking that, ‘Ah, I have to win every single match right now’.

“And for me it was a learning lesson and at the end of the day I feel like it was good it happened this year so I know what to do differently next year.”

‘I didn’t want to get out of bed’

Tom Hill, who has coached Sakkari for nearly five years, described how she withdrew from everyone around her for a period of time.

“The main thing was that match against [Paula] Badosa in Indian Wells when she found out she got to No. 3 in the world; she never thought she could be No. 3 in the world,” explained Hill.

“We never talked rankings, we never said anything like that, and then when they said it at that moment, ‘You’re now No.3 in the world’, it was like, ‘Woah’.

“She started just kind of having panic attacks and just went away from her whole game, completely forgot how it is she was supposed to play, went away from her routines, kind of distanced herself from everybody. It’s been a really difficult time for her.”

At times during the clay season, Sakkari was overcome by anxiety and sadness, and struggled to find joy on the court.

“It was pretty much all of it. In Madrid I won’t say ‘depressed’ because I don’t want to belittle the experiences of the people who suffer from that but I was just very…my room was dark, I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to do anything with my team, I didn’t enjoy practice. So I think anxiety and sadness was just a mixture of everything,” she revealed.

Sakkari began to turn a corner after her close defeat to Karolina Pliskova in Toronto over the summer but her momentum was halted when she ran into a red-hot Caroline Garcia in the opening round in Cincinnati. Garcia beat the Greek in three sets and went on to win the title as a qualifier.

After the US Open, Sakkari turned back to clay and competed in a 250 event in Parma, where she made it to the final but lost to Egypt’s Mayar Sherif. Sakkari’s mother believes going back to clay helped her daughter find her rhythm on a surface that required patience in constructing points.

Re-hiring a psychologist

In her next tournament in Ostrava, Sakkari decided to re-enlist the help of a sports psychologist she had worked with in the past and it quickly proved to be a smart decision. The 27-year-old looks to have recaptured her spark and her results in Guadalajara last week and her victory over Pegula on Monday are testament to that.

“I think it was probably the best decision we’ve made,” Sakkari said of bringing her sports psychologist back in the fold.

“She has helped me in the past so much and she has now helped me again just to overcome this difficult, dark place that I was in. She’s amazing. She has helped me so much in a lot of things, just to find my routines and just to find myself again. I’m very grateful to have a person like her next to me.”

During the changeovers in her matches, Sakkari can be seen reading some notes she has jotted down and she says they are just some helpful reminders she came up with her psychologist to realise what she can do better, what’s working for her on the court, and to stick to her routines.

“Obviously I’m never going to master anything because no one does, so it’s nice just to remind yourself every now and then,” she added.

Hill feels “confident now that Maria’s back” and “next year will be very good”.

The British coach has also benefitted greatly from having a sports psychologist on the team and is involved in the talks she has with Sakkari.

She also helps Hill use the right words at the right moments with Sakkari and he admits it’s been a positive learning experience for him as well, finding out more about the psychological aspect of the game.

“I told Maria, I was like obviously it would be great to win this tournament [in Fort Worth]. We’re here to win it. But the last few weeks has been trying to build momentum for next season and I believe if we can do that, next season she can dominate, I see no reason why not,” said Hill.

‘I want to be there when she wins her first Slam’

Long-term player-coach partnerships can be hard to come by on the WTA tour but Sakkari and Hill have somehow managed to maintain a stable relationship over the past five years, even through a season as tough as her 2022 campaign.

“The last four, five months it was very tough. Of course Maria says she wants to finish her career with me, but you’re also like, ‘Okay, if results don’t get better that might not happen’,” he admits.

“I believed that I could help Maria get out of it but it’s never easy. I never once ever even considered stopping or anything, that never crossed my mind and I don’t want to stop with Maria. I’ve been almost five years with Maria now, so we’ve gone from bad times, good times, and I want to be there for her when she wins her first Slam. Because it will happen, there’s no way it won’t happen.

“I’m so sure. It’s just part of her journey. The same way I believe Jess [Pegula] will also win a Slam, I believe Paula Badosa will win a Slam, but everyone’s got their own journey.”

Sakkari’s 1-6 win-loss record in finals comes up frequently, especially when discussing how someone with such talent and fire has managed to win just one tournament so far. Hill is not concerned by that statistic and cited Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime as an example, noting how he lost his first eight consecutive finals before clinching four titles this season.

“Everyone likes to talk about it [Sakkari’s finals record], but if I wanted to give you numbers, like everyone loves to say, ‘oh she’s won and lost six’, or whatever she is in finals, but go check her third round in Grand Slams record from like four years ago. Go check her record in semis from the last couple of years. She’s overcome both of those,” said Hill.

“Okay, maybe her final record isn’t great, but when she overcomes it, just like Felix has, she’s going to be fine. Everyone’s got their own journey, and this is Maria’s journey. Yeah, she’s admitted she’s choked in some finals, okay, but everyone does and if she can learn from and eventually overcome it, I’m not worried about it. She’s going to get over that finish line and it’s going to feel so much better when she does.”

‘She’s very proud, she loves her country’

If there’s one thing Sakkari can count on, it’s her fighting ability. She has that Spartan fire within her – something that runs in the family.

“She gets it from both of us, we are fighters,” Sakkari’s mother said.

“My husband was a fighter in his life because he started from a very small village and he became a big businessman. And I was a tennis player, I had to fight, because tennis, if you don’t fight, you’re not a tennis player. So I think from both of us, but she’s a better version.”

Kanellopoulou has proudly watched her daughter’s profile grow bigger and bigger back home in Greece and says it can sometimes get difficult for Sakkari to walk in a street without getting noticed.

“But she’s very simple. It’s okay, she can handle it, because it’s nice, it’s not something that disturbs her, at the moment,” added Kanellopoulou.

“Greece at the moment has two players in the top five, Stefanos [Tsitsipas] and Maria. I think they would have never imagined to have that from a sport that is not very popular in Greece. It wasn’t because tennis in Greece is big, it was because of the families, because we don’t have tradition in tennis, it was all a family affair.

“But still we give back, even if they didn’t help us on the way to the top, we give it back to the Greek people because we love Greece and we are very proud to be Greek, and she’s very proud, she loves her country.”

Sakkari will face Aryna Sabalenka in her second round-robin match at the WTA Finals in Fort Worth on Wednesday. Victory would see Sakkari advance to the semi-finals at the event for a second consecutive year.