IT HAS been a rough start to the season for Greek tennis fans with both Stefanos Tsitsipas and Maria Sakkari bundled out in the opening round of the Australian Open. Sakkari had just one win to her name in 2025 entering the Upper Austria Ladies tournament in Linz, and was desperate to turn it around against Bulgarian Viktoriya Tomova.

Impressively she did, winning 6-3 6-2, though it was the manner at which she served that really caught the eye. We crunch the numbers to see the differences between her performance overnight, and her three other WTA Tour main draw matches.

Incredibly, the Greek third seed was coming off a lucky loser effort in Adelaide – falling in qualifying before getting up to defeat talented young Czech Linda Noskova in the first round. However back-to-back losses to Jessica Pegula and Maria Camila Osorio Serrano had her quickly bundled out of both Adelaide and the Australian Open.

Despite that fact, she entered the Austrian WTA 500 event as third seed, with a lot of top players resting after a long fortnight in Melbourne. Tomova is a solid enough player, so while Sakkari was clearly favourite, she could not afford to play the way she did against Osorio Serrano at Melbourne Park.

In that first round loss, she hit a whopping 50 unforced errors for only 23 winners, with a serve rating of 213 and dominance rating of 0.81. For a player who likes to control play with her hitting, she was largely wayward against the young Colombian. The week before in Adelaide, her loss to Pegula was as bad as it gets, only hitting 11 winners and committing 75 unforced errors.

For Sakkari to be performing strongly, she needs to be up around the 300 mark for her serve rating, and above 170 for her return. She ticked both those boxes against Tomova overnight, clocking 312 and 176 respectively. Both were season-highs for the Greek third seed, and for the first time in 2025, Sakkari hit more winners than unforced errors (23 and 22 respectively), with an equal season-high and season-lows respectively as well.

The graph below highlights the differences between her win over Tomova compared to her losses to Osorio and Pegula, and even the win over Noskova.

What that indicates is that her serving was back to its best, and while Tomova herself had only won her first match two days earlier against Jessica Bouzas Maneiro – a player Sakkari lost to at the United Cup – she has the potential to worry the Greek.

As shown above, Sakkari’s two best serving performances came overnight and in her win over Noskova. While winning points off your first serve will waver due to your opponent’s strength, her performance against Osorio – a player she should beat – was poor, with just half of her first serves in. Even against Noskova, she was serving at two thirds efficiency, but took full advantage to win four out of five points on serve.

The reason her serving performance against Tomova was better than her effort against Noskova is both because she served at a higher efficiency, and only faced one break point in the process. Additionally, she won 63 per cent of her second serve points, which is far superior than 45 per cent of below in her other three matches, including in her win over Noskova.

So while her first serve saved her against the Czech in Adelaide, her overall service performance against Tomova – both first and second serve points – allowed her to really dictate play and get control during the 6-3 6-2 victory.

Up next, Sakkari will likely take on fifth seed Ukrainian Dayana Yastremska, who is facing Croatian qualifier Antonia Ruzic in the Round of 16. Should it be Yastremska, then Sakkari will need to maintain her serving performance given Yastremska can give as good as she gets as well.

UPPER AUSTRIA LADIES LINZ WTA 500 – ROUND OF 16 RESULTS:

[3] Maria Sakkari (GRE) defeated Viktoriya Tomova (BUL) 6-3 6-2
[6] Anastasia Potapova (RUS) defeated Rebecca Sramkova (SVK) 7-6 6-4
[8] Clara Tauson (DEN) defeated Sorana Cirstea (ROU) 6-2 6-4