Maria Sakkari makes winning start in Nottingham against Wang

Maria Sakkari returned to the Nottingham event with a lot of motivation and she made a winning start beating the tricky Xiyu Wang in two sets 6-2 7-6(6).

The Greek player hasn't been having a very good season and the Roland Garros was a huge disappointment. She was able to take some time off after that and reset before the grass season which is generally a good part of the year for her. This match certainly proved that as Sakkari stormed out to a really solid start beating Wang 6-2 in the opening set of the match. She didn't serve that well so the score is even more impressive considering she didn't have one of her major weapons.

Sakkari was still able to dominate the rallies winning most of the points behind her first and second serve. She didn't face a single break point in the opening set but she did face break points in the second set. It happened in the opening game of the set with Wang having an early 2-0 lead. Not long after that Sakkari made it 2-2.

Sakkari had a match point at 5-4 in the second set but Wang was able to save that. She then had three more match points but failed to convert all of them complicating the match even further. We went into the tiebreak and Wang was on top early taking a 3-1 lead. It was 4-2 then but eventually, Sakkari managed to battle back and make it 5-5. Wang's play kind of faltered after that and Sakkari was able to find another match point which she managed to convert this time around.

The good thing for Sakkari in the second set was tha she served quite a bit better with 4 aces and only four lost points behind her first serve.