Roland Garros 2024: Maria Sakkari faces shocking defeat against Varvara Gracheva in first round

The Roland Garros is not only a major tournament for the men, but the women as well since they also compete for their grand slam glory in these major tournaments. There are a lot of WTA players who are in the mix and have been giving great performances in the season already.  There are also a lot of iconic matches we will be looking forward to in the WTA setup as well. 

One of the matches that was looked at as a potential one-sided bout was between Maria Sakkari who is a world number 6 in the rankings and Varvara Gracheva. Maria Sakkari has also been in great form during this Clay season where she has made it to many playoffs as well. The French Open was also a tournament where she looked like one of the best players in the cards as well and be one of the favorites especially as she was up against a young and unseeded player.

Gracheva upsets Sakkari

As we all know the Clay season was already filled with surprises leading up to this finale and that is exactly what happened in this encounter. Maria looked like the clear winner as she won the first set by a score of 6-3 and put the pressure on the youngster. From here it suddenly turned bad for Sakkari as Gracheva fought back valiantly in the second winning 6 games to 4 making it an intense battle for the Greek talent. We all thought that Sakkari would still come back from this set, but shockingly came up short in the last set where Gracheva once again got the better of her and qualified for the 2nd round.

This was one of the biggest upsets in the tournament so far, where we saw one of the most experienced players in the tournament fail shockingly against a young player. We all expected a player like Sakkari to at least get a victory over Gracheva, but it seems like it was the 23-year-old French woman who was the best player on the day.