{"id":799399,"date":"2026-07-14T09:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T09:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799399\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T09:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T09:10:09","slug":"sakkari-powers-into-athens-open-second-round-with-straight-sets-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799399\/","title":{"rendered":"Sakkari powers into Athens Open second round with straight-sets win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Sakkari has progressed to the second round of the Athens Open WTA 250 with a straight-sets victory over Polina Kudermetova.<\/p>\n<p>Playing in the tournament for the first time in her career, the Greek world No. 37 defeated the world No. 109 6-0, 7-6 in front of a near-capacity home crowd at the Sports Center indoor arena.<\/p>\n<p>Sakkari dominated the opening set, conceding no games as she raced to a 6-0 lead.<\/p>\n<p>Kudermetova responded in the second set, pushing the 30-year-old Greek and forcing a tiebreak after a closely contested set.<\/p>\n<p>Sakkari lifted her level in the tiebreak, winning it 7-1 to seal the match in one hour and 24 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>The victory sends the former world No. 3 into the second round, where she will face Britain\u2019s Harriet Dart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maria Sakkari has progressed to the second round of the Athens Open WTA 250 with a straight-sets victory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-799399","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\/799399","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=799399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}