{"id":856844,"date":"2026-08-16T03:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856844\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T03:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T03:06:11","slug":"maria-sakkari-battles-past-rakhimova-in-cincinnati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/856844\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Sakkari battles past Rakhimova in Cincinnati"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maria Sakkari has advanced at the Cincinnati Masters after defeating Kamilla Rakhimova 6-2, 5-7, 6-1 in a three-set second-round clash.<\/p>\n<p>Sakkari took control early, winning the opening set 6-2, before Rakhimova responded to take the second 7-5 and force a deciding set.<\/p>\n<p>The Greek player regained control in the third set, winning 6-1 to seal the victory.<\/p>\n<p>Sakkari hit six aces to Rakhimova\u2019s two and won 68 per cent of points behind her first serve. She converted eight of 19 break-point opportunities and saved seven of the 12 break points she faced.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile on Friday Stefanos Tsitsipas overcame a late wobble, when he recovered from a two-match-point stumble to defeat Valentin Royer 7-6(4), 7-5 and book a second-round showdown with Felix Auger-Aliassime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maria Sakkari has advanced at the Cincinnati Masters after defeating Kamilla Rakhimova 6-2, 5-7, 6-1 in a three-set&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-856844","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\/856844","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=856844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}