Maria Sakkari pushes aside doubts, 'tough to overcome' thoughts to reign in Guadalajara

Guadalajara, unfortunately, keeps getting squeezed. In 2021, the Mexican city hosted the most raucous WTA Finals on record. In 2022, it lost the Finals, but was consoled with a 1000-level event in October that featured six of the tour’s Top 10. In 2023, it staged the same 1000-level event, but this time play began just a week after the US Open. Not surprisingly, all of the WTA’s Top 6 were absent.

The tournament has been a victim of the sport’s return to China, which began last week and runs into mid-October. Through all of those changes and downgrades, though, the fans in Guadalajara have kept filling seats, kept making their enthusiastic noise—and kept helping one of their favorite players, Maria Sakkari. She made the semifinals here in 2021, and the final in 2022.

This year, with her 7-5, 6-3 victory over Caroline Dolehide on Saturday, she won her first WTA 1000, and her first title of any sort since 2019.

“I feel like I keep saying the same thing every day, but it’s just very helpful,” Sakkari said of the support she gets in Guadalajara. “It’s just something that I really appreciate. I just really enjoy my time here, it’s very special.”

Sakkari needed a little extra help after this year’s US Open. She had come into that tournament having reached a final earlier in the summer in D.C., but she went out in straight sets in her opener in New York, to 71st-ranked Rebeka Masarova. It was her third straight first-round loss at a major; afterward, Sakkari teared up in the interview room and even contemplated taking time away from the tour.

But the image of Sakkari hitting bottom sparked some welcome love from fans and fellow players.

“A lot of players really felt for me,” Sakkari told WTA Insider from Guadalajara. “I cannot describe in words the amount of love and support I got. ... That was the main reason I kept going.”

Sakkari kept going and going and going in Guadalajara, where she was the seeded second. She didn’t drop a set in five matches, and beat No. 3 seed Caroline Garcia 6-3, 6-0 in the semifinals. But how much would her first four wins mean if she didn’t close out the week with a fifth?

Sakkari had lost six straight finals, more than enough to create a phobia in any player. In Guadalajara, she had the crowd behind her and, in Dolehide, she was facing a player ranked 111th in the world. But Sakkari’s nerves were still evident. She gave an early break back; serving for the set at 6-5, she double faulted to go down 0-30; and with a chance to go up a double break in the third, her arm seized up and she netted an easy forehand pass.

But this time she surmounted all of the setbacks, breaking Dolehide at 5-3 in the second set for the title.

“I’m speechless,” Sakkari said afterwards. “It’s been four and half years since I won my first title, and I just finally won my second one. All these thoughts I’ve been having all this time were very tough to overcome, and I’m just very proud of myself that I did it this week.”

Sakkari finished with 19 winners to Dolehide’s eight, and she did nearly everything just a little better and more consistently than her opponent. But if the Greek’s win was a breakthrough, so was the American’s run to her first 1000 final. Dolehide has always had a powerful baseline game, but at 25, with veteran coach Jorge Todero in her corner, she has slimmed down and learned to use her athleticism more effectively. She has one of the game’s best kick serves—Sakkari had to jump to reach it—and she has learned to follow it up with a strong forehand on the next shot, and a transition game that lets her take advantage of her 5-foot-10 height and range at net.

Could Dolehide follow the career arc of someone like Jennifer Brady, another player whose improved fitness led to much-improved results?

“The skill, the craft, the guile in her game,” one Guadalajara commentator enthused of Dolehide 2.0. On Monday, she’ll become the next American to enter the Top 50.

Together, Sakkari and Dolehide used Guadalajara—its weaker draw and its cheering fans—to make their immediate futures much more promising than they were a week ago.