{"id":699353,"date":"2026-05-28T05:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T05:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/699353\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T05:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T05:14:12","slug":"tsitsipas-sakkari-keep-greek-hopes-alive-at-roland-garros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/699353\/","title":{"rendered":"Tsitsipas, Sakkari keep Greek hopes alive at Roland Garros"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Greek tennis stars Maria Sakkari and Stefanos Tsitsipas both progressed to the second round of Roland Garros following impressive opening-round performances in Paris.<\/p>\n<p>Sakkari delivered one of her strongest displays in recent seasons, overcoming world No. 12 Linda Noskova 7-5, 7-6(3) in a high-quality battle that lasted one hour and 53 minutes on the Paris clay.<\/p>\n<p>The victory was particularly significant for Sakkari, marking her first win at Roland Garros since 2022 after a challenging stretch at the tournament in recent years.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" title=\"roland garros sakari - TA NEA\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/roland-garros-sakari-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Female tennis player in a black outfit mid-swing on a court, gripping a racket with focused expression.\" class=\"wp-image-191253\"  data-\/><\/p>\n<p>The Greek began confidently, racing to leads of 2-0 and 4-2 in the opening set before Noskova clawed her way back to level at 4-4. Sakkari responded at the perfect moment, securing a crucial break in the 11th game before serving out the set with authority.<\/p>\n<p>The second set brought even more drama. Although Sakkari initially held the advantage, she soon found herself trailing 4-1 and staring at triple set point at 5-2, 0-40. The former Roland Garros semi-finalist responded superbly, reeling off 11 straight points to completely shift the momentum.<\/p>\n<p>Noskova struggled under the pressure, committing three double faults during one service game, while Sakkari stayed composed to force a tie-break and eventually close out the match 7-3.<\/p>\n<p>The result gave Sakkari her second win over Noskova in three meetings \u2014 and their first encounter on clay. She will next face qualifier Claire Liu for a spot in the third round.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" title=\"roland garros tsitsipas - TA NEA\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/roland-garros-tsitsipas-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Male tennis player in black and orange outfit prepares to hit a backhand on a court with BNP Paribas signage behind him.\" class=\"wp-image-191252\"  data-\/><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Tsitsipas had a far less demanding route into round two after French opponent Alexandre Muller retired injured during their match.<\/p>\n<p>Tsitsipas, ranked world No. 79, was leading 6-2, 3-0 after just 50 minutes when Muller was forced to withdraw with a foot injury.<\/p>\n<p>Muller made the brighter start, breaking Tsitsipas early to move ahead 2-0 after taking advantage of an erratic opening service game from the Greek. However, Tsitsipas quickly found his rhythm and took full control from there.<\/p>\n<p>The Frenchman later required a medical timeout before eventually retiring after losing nine consecutive games.<\/p>\n<p>The comfortable victory represents a positive start for Tsitsipas, who has faced several difficult Grand Slam campaigns in recent seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The former French Open finalist has now reached the second round at Roland Garros for the ninth straight year and will next take on Matteo Arnaldi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greek tennis stars Maria Sakkari and Stefanos Tsitsipas both progressed to the second round of Roland Garros following&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-699353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}