"I knew it was going to be very tough" admitted Sakkari after taking down Andreescu

Maria Sakkari defeated Bianca Andreescu after an epic battle that lasted well over 3 hours inflicting the Canadian her first loss ever at the US Open.

Andreescu was unbeaten at the US Open so far but that ended last night. It was Maria Sakkari who defeated her after an epic 3 and half hour battle on Ashe. A hard-fought match was to be expected as Andreescu rarely gives anything away and that was the case in this one as well. After the match Sakkari admitted she expected a tough battle:

"I told Tom [Hill] and my team before the match that I'm prepared for 7-6 in the third. Seriously, I never thought that with Bianca it would be like 6-4, 6-1 unless I played lights out tennis, hit winners left and right. But because she fights every single point, I knew that it was going to be a very tough match."

It did not start of well for Sakkari who did not trust herself enough and that reflected on her play. She said:

"I think in the first set especially I was not going for my shots like I normally do. I was a little bit not very confident with my groundstrokes. I said, Maria if you want to win this match, you have to go for it."

That's what Sakkari ended up doing and things went much better in the 2nd set for her. She was brave and trusted herself more saying:

"I didn't have the control of the match until the middle of the second set. I felt like she was better than me, but then somehow I dug in and found a way to just turn things around. I was braver after a certain point of the match, then got my energy level a little bit higher."