Chwalinska Beats Sakkari 6-0, 3-6, 7-5 in Wuhan Quarterfinals

By Taki Panos

Two and a half hours of tennis in Wuhan came down to one game. Maria Sakkari's week at the Wuhan Open ended in the quarterfinals on Friday, when Poland's Maja Chwalinska beat her 6-0, 3-6, 7-5 after 2 hours and 35 minutes, as SDNA reported. Sakkari lost the first set without winning a game, came storming back to take the second, and then saved break point after break point in the decider before Chwalinska finally broke her serve in the twelfth game to close it out.

For anyone who has not been following the week, Wuhan is the last WTA 1000 event of the season, and Sakkari arrived unseeded and ranked No. 35. She opened with a straight-sets win over Donna Vekic, then came from a set down to beat Marta Kostyuk, and on Thursday she beat 17-year-old wildcard Mia Pohankova to reach the last eight. A win on Friday would have matched her best result in Wuhan, the semifinal she reached as a qualifier in 2017, according to the WTA match notes.

Chwalinska was no ordinary opponent. The 25-year-old Pole, ranked No. 22 and seeded 16th, reached the Roland Garros final as a qualifier earlier this year, and this was her first WTA 1000 quarterfinal. She got here by beating Iva Jovic 6-4, 6-1, the biggest win of her career by ranking, per the WTA. The two had split their earlier meetings: Sakkari won in Rome qualifying in 2025, and Chwalinska came back to win 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 in the third round in Paris earlier this year.

The opening set was rough viewing for Greek fans. Chwalinska broke in the very first game, broke again in the third and a third time for 5-0, then held to love to finish it, Sport.pl reported. The Polish outlet counted just three unforced errors from Chwalinska in that set against 14 from Sakkari. Drop shots, changes of pace, short angles: everything the Pole tried seemed to work. A 6-0 set at this level usually tells you where a match is heading. Not this time.

Sakkari reset completely in the second set. She saved an early break point in her first service game, then broke Chwalinska in the second game and kept that lead the rest of the way, according to Sport.pl. Chwalinska had one real chance to get back on serve at 2-4, but Sakkari held firm, and the set ended 6-3 when a Chwalinska backhand went out. The Greek was pumping herself up after big points by then, and the whole match had a different feel.

The third set turned into a long test of nerve on Sakkari's serve. Chwalinska had a break point in the second game and Sakkari held for 1-1. Sakkari came close to a break of her own in the fifth game, but the Pole held for 3-2. Later, after a Sakkari double fault, Chwalinska had another opening, and in the eighth game she led 40-15 with two break points, Sport.pl noted. Each time, Sakkari found a way out and kept the score level.

It looked like a tiebreak was coming. Instead, with Sakkari serving at 5-6, the errors crept in, Chwalinska pounced, and she converted her first match point to win 7-5, per Sport.pl, with the Tennis Majors match page showing the same final score. SDNA summed it up as a match decided by small details and won by the player who stayed calmer at the end, adding that Chwalinska had been pushing for the break for almost the entire set and got it at the most important moment (translated from Greek).

The result puts Chwalinska 2-1 ahead in the head-to-head, with both of her wins coming in three sets this year. It also sends her into her first WTA 1000 semifinal, equaling her best hard-court result after reaching the last four in Singapore last month, according to the WTA match notes. She will face the winner of the last quarterfinal between Iga Swiatek and Ann Li, as the official draw shows, which means a possible all-Polish semifinal.

For Sakkari, the loss stings, but the week was a good one. She came to Wuhan with 26 Tour-level wins in 2026, her most in a season since she won 38 in 2023, and 21 of them have come on hard courts, the WTA match notes show. The win over Kostyuk was her third against a top 10 player this year. She was chasing a third semifinal of 2026 after Doha and Athens, and she was one service hold away from a deciding tiebreak.

It has been a week of near misses for Greek tennis in China. Over in Shanghai, Stefanos Tsitsipas reached the fourth round of the Masters before Daniil Medvedev beat him 6-4, 7-5. Two deep runs and two tight losses, each decided by a handful of points. For Greek fans, that still counts for something heading into the end of the season.

My take: the first set was a write-off, and Sakkari deserves real credit for not letting it become a 6-0, 6-2 afternoon. The comeback in the second set was the version of her we have watched for years, aggressive and loud and hard to play against. But Chwalinska created more chances in the third, and Sakkari's serve was under pressure in game after game. You can only save so many break points. In the end she ran out of escapes.

Chwalinska now goes on to the semifinals with a lot of momentum and a shot at her first final on a hard court. Sakkari leaves Wuhan with a quarterfinal, a top 10 win and a lot to build on for the rest of the season. For more Greek tennis, football, basketball and everything in between, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. Tough loss, good week.

Sources: SDNA, Sport.pl, WTA, WTA match notes, Tennis Majors.

Image: Flag of Greece, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).