Defending champion Iga Swiatek was sent packing from the French Open by Greek world No.18 Maria Sakkari, who stunned the 20-year-old Polish star 6-4, 6-4 and set up a semi-final clash against Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova.<\/p>\n
World No.33 Barbora ended American teenager Coco Gauff’s hopes of reaching her maiden Grand Slam semi-final with a 7-6 (8-6), 6-3 victory.<\/p>\n
Maria, who is now the highest-ranked player in the field, is just two wins away from a historic maiden Grand Slam singles title for a Greek woman. A win at the end of the week could also propel her into the top 10.<\/p>\n
Iga was on a winning streak of 11 matches and 22 sets at the Roland Garros, but a right thigh strain seemed to be bothering her all through the match against Maria.<\/p>\n
Coco had been in great form on clay and cruised to her maiden Grand Slam quarter-final with ease but yesterday she was unable to take any of the five set points in the opening set and simply faded away.<\/p>\n
The 17-year-old led 3-0 and 5-3 in the opening set, as well as 6-4 in the tie-break, but each time Barbora clawed back.<\/p>\n
The disappointment after the missed set-points for Coco was evident as she made a poor start to the second set. Coco’s pent-up frustration came to the fore when she smashed her racquet after a double fault that left her 4-0 behind.<\/p>\n
Barbora, better known for her doubles exploits \u2013 she was ranked world No. 1 in 2018 and has won two women’s doubles and three mixed doubles Grand Slam titles \u2013 showed no sign of nerves as Coco self-destructed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Defending champion Iga Swiatek was sent packing from the French Open by Greek world No.18 Maria Sakkari, who stunned the 20-year-old Polish star 6-4, 6-4 and set up a semi-final clash against Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova. World No.33 Barbora ended American teenager Coco Gauff’s hopes of reaching her maiden Grand Slam semi-final with a 7-6 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7886,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7884\/revisions\/7886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}