Being a top tennis player can be rather tricky. During a recent interview with Eurosport, Maria Sakkari confessed that she was struggling with the expectations of being a top player and representing a small country. Her coach Tom Hill revealed that she was having panic attacks when she learned that she was the new world number 3.
“The main thing was that match against [Paula] Badosa in Indian Wells when she found out she got to No. 3 in the world; she never thought she could be No. 3 in the world,” said Hill.
Maria revealed that at times she didn’t want to go out of bed. “In Madrid, I won’t say ‘depressed’ because I don’t want to belittle the experiences of the people who suffer from that, but I was just very…my room was dark, I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to do anything with my team, I didn’t enjoy the practice. So I think anxiety and sadness was just a mixture of everything,” she said.
The psychologist
Sakkari said that she turned to a psychologist to cope with the situation and that was a great idea.
“I think it was probably the best decision we’ve made. She has helped me in the past so much and she has now helped me again just to overcome this difficult, dark place that I was in. She’s amazing. She has helped me so much in a lot of things
, just to find my routines and just to find myself again. I’m very grateful to have a person like her next to me,” said Sakkari.Maria Sakkari in 2022
Ranked no.6, Sakkari played her last match on the 6th of November when she surrendered to world no.4 Caroline Garcia 6-3 6-2 in the semifinal in Fort Worth (draw).
Currently, during this season the Greek achieved a compiled 40-23 record. Maria Sakkari’s most significant accomplishment of this season was getting to the final in St. Petersburg, Indian Wells, Parma and Guadalajara.