26 year old Maria Sakkari has set yet another career record, for the fifth consecutive week, as the tennis player climbed to no.7 in the ATP rankings.
Sakkari might not have progressed at the Indian Wells tournament, but she still managed to gain a couple of spots in the world ranking as from today, she is officially at No. 7 in the world.
She’s now the highest-ranked Greek woman in WTA rankings history.
Before Sakkari, the only Greek woman to reach the Top 20 of the WTA rankings was Eleni Daniilidou, who went as high as No. 14 in 2003 and won five career WTA titles, and whose best results at Grand Slams were three fourth-round showings at Wimbledon in 2002 (falling to Jennifer Capriati), the Australian Open in 2003 (falling to Serena Williams) and the US Open in 2004 (falling to Shinobu Asagoe).
Sakkari only has one WTA title, at a WTA 250 on clay in 2019 in Rabat, Morocco, but she’s far surpassed Daniilidou at the Grand Slam stage, not only becoming the first Greek woman to reach the quarterfinals of a major, but reaching two semifinals. Her first came at Roland Garros earlier this year, where she actually had a match point against Barbora Krejcikova.
She's No. 7 in the year-to-date standings.
“I think I’m the best age of my career,” she said during her run in Flushing Meadows. “I’m more mature than before. As I said many times, I think every single player has a different timing of breaking through. Now it’s probably my time at the age of 26.
“I came in late in the tour. I was not a good junior. I was not a star when I was 18 or 19 years old. I had to work and sacrifice a lot from my life. But it’s now paying off, and I’m thrilled that at the age of 26, I can achieve these results.”
Sakkari won two places as Swiatek and Kenin dropped 7 and six places, respectively.
