{"id":97995,"date":"2026-02-16T07:15:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=97995"},"modified":"2026-02-16T02:30:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:30:31","slug":"despite-falling-in-doha-semifinal-sakkari-should-take-the-positives-from-her-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2026\/02\/16\/despite-falling-in-doha-semifinal-sakkari-should-take-the-positives-from-her-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Falling in Doha Semifinal, Sakkari Should Take the Positives From Her Run"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was quite the week for Maria Sakkari.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A former top-3 player who has struggled to maintain her ranking in recent years, the expected result for Sakkari at the 2026 Qatar Open wasn\u2019t anything monumental. She\u2019s been playing decent tennis, but nothing that would suggest a deep run.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, although she had a tough loss to eventual champion Karolina Muchova, Sakkari\u2019s run to the WTA Doha semifinals was nothing short of excellent. And as her ranking rises (currently up to No. 33, 19 spots above where she was last week), her confidence should rise too.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Maria Sakkari&#8217;s Strong Start in Doha<\/h2>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"max-width: 610px\"><smartframe-embed class=\"smartframe_wp_element\" customer-id=\"b0c95bc04383cef69c6b47df872135cf\" image-id=\"WmOBBRjzLwD4\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 3600px; aspect-ratio: 3600\/2400;\" ><\/smartframe-embed><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sakkari dominated in her first-round match against wildcard Zeynep Sonmez, 6-1 6-3, and that got the ball rolling for some suffocating tennis as she continued to play. In the second round, she upset sixth seed Jasmine Paolini, 6-4 6-2, then defeated qualifier Varvara Gracheva, 7-6 6-0.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It was a level that Sakkari hadn\u2019t played at since her last great 1000-level run: Indian Wells in 2024. Almost two years later, Sakkari was finally finding her best tennis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the quarterfinals, Sakkari was up against top seed Iga Swiatek. Sakkari hadn\u2019t beaten Swiatek since 2021, and this was a tournament where Swiatek has historically done well; it was a tough ask to beat her.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At first, it looked like the match would go the way of all of Sakkari\u2019s recent matches against Swiatek. She lost it, 6-2, and Swiatek had all the momentum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But Sakkari didn\u2019t stay down for long.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She went up an early break, and although Swiatek eventually broke back it was clear that Sakkari was playing at the level she had in her first three rounds. At 5-4, Sakkari broke for the set and forced a third.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Iga Swiatek vs. Maria Sakkari | 2026 Doha Quarterfinals | WTA Match Highlights\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eGAgFSJL0rU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From there, it was all Sakkari\u2014good and bad. She broke Swiatek\u2019s serve twice and attempted to serve for the match at 5-3, but couldn\u2019t put it away. Sakkari\u2019s best tennis was there, but there were flashes of her worst as well. But she got things back on track with three break match points, converting the third on a Swiatek volley error and achieving the upset.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sakkari\u2019s semifinal loss against Muchova was tough. But overall, this week was a return to form, and that\u2019s what she should see it as.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was quite the week for Maria Sakkari. A former top-3 player who has struggled to maintain her ranking in recent years, the expected result for Sakkari at the 2026 Qatar Open wasn\u2019t anything monumental. She\u2019s been playing decent tennis, but nothing that would suggest a deep run. So, although she had a tough loss [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5769,"featured_media":62837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,15913],"tags":[2178,307,305,15,364],"class_list":["post-97995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta","category-featured","category-opinion","tag-greece-tennis","tag-greek-tennis","tag-maria-sakkari","tag-wta","tag-wta-tour"],"modified_by":"Steen Kirby","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5769"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97995"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98018,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97995\/revisions\/98018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}