Barbora Krejcikova spoiled the party as she beat hometown favourite Maria Sakkari 7-6 (7\/5), 6-3 in the final of the WTA hard-court tournament in Athens on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The two-time Grand Slam winner from the Czech Republic needed just shy of an hour and three-quarters to claim her first title of the season.<\/p>\n
Krejcikova, 30, battled back from 4-1 down in the opener to force a tie-break, before eventually edging into the lead.<\/p>\n
Sakkari again went up a break in the next set before the world number 32 roared back to claim the ninth title of her career, and first since Wimbledon two years ago.<\/p>\n
For former world number three and Athens native Sakkari her almost three-year wait for a third trophy goes on.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old was following in her mother\u2019s footsteps by playing in the title-decider at the event, which returned to the Greek capital this season after a 35 years hiatus.<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barbora Krejcikova spoiled the party as she beat hometown favourite Maria Sakkari 7-6 (7\/5), 6-3 in the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-811405","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\/811405","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=811405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}