Young star Varvara Gracheva pulled out of the early upsets of the French Open 2024 as she eliminated Maria Sakkari in the first round of the competition on May 27, Monday to move to the second round. Buoyed by the support from the home crowd, Gracheva secured a comeback win over the Greek star with the scoreline reading 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 as the match ended in just over 2 hours and 10 minutes.
Sakkari, who was looking to make amends for her poor showing in the Australian Open, had a shaky start as Gracheva was able to break her in the very first game. However, Sakkari was able to return the favour in the next one as she was slowy able to gain control over things and took a 4-2 lead by breaking the 23-year-old French star. The duo would then go on lose while serving, before Sakkari finally pulled away and secured the first set 6-3.
Gracheva would find her groove in the second set and was finally able to break Sakkari to take the lead and extend it to 4-1. Sakkari, however, would mount a comeback of her own and levelled the score at 4-4 as the odds were in favour of the 6th seed at that point.
However, the French star was able to get a grip of proceedings and won the next two games to make the game 1-1 and pushing it into the decider. The third set saw both women push each other in the early goings with the score level at 2-2.
Gracheva was able to take the lead from the serve and then both women had an incredible back and forth in the next game. It seemed like the Greek star would be able to level things up before Gracheva used the encouragement from the crowd to gain the advantage and secure the break point.
The next serve saw Gracheva on the verge of securing the win with the score at 5-2, before Sakkari dug deep to save a couple of match points and get the game. However, it wasn’t able to start a revival for the 6th seed as Gracheva secured a memorable win to progress to the next round.
