‘They Opened The Doors’: Top 10 Tsitsipas, Sakkari Inspiring United Cup Teammates

Greece’s preparations for the 2024 United Cup are in full swing in Sydney, but that did not stop the second-seeded team from dropping off to spend time with some loveable locals Saturday in the Australian city.

The ATP Tour and WTA Tour stars on the country’s roster at the mixed teams event paid a visit to the iconic Taronga Zoo, where they fed the giraffes and met the koalas before previewing their United Cup campaign with the media.

“It's charming to be in a team event again,” said the No. 6 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, Stefanos Tsitsipas. “There's a lot of excitement that this holds. It's quite valuable for me personally. I've talked about how I enjoy team events in tennis, something that usually we lack as tennis players. We're mostly representing ourselves.

“United Cup is one of the most exciting competitions that tennis has at the moment. To be representing the Greek colours is something that you don't see in tennis that often. It's not something that we had before.”

Taking a walk on the wild side 🦒 😎#UnitedCup #feelnewsydney @sydney_sider pic.twitter.com/lBz8hIBoR0

— United Cup (@UnitedCupTennis) December 30, 2023

For the second straight year, Tsitsipas’ brother and fellow ATP Tour player Petros Tsitsipas will captain Team Greece, which also features Stefanos Sakellaridis and WTA stars Maria Sakkari, Despina Papamichail and Valentini Grammatikopoulou.

For Sakellaridis, Papamichail and Grammatikopoulou, the chance to spend more time with Top 10 stars Stefanos Tsitsipas and Sakkari is a unique benefit of the United Cup’s team format.

"For us, they're big examples,” said the WTA World No. 94 Papamichail. “We follow them all the year, we look forward to playing with them. With Maria in Billie Jean King Cup and Stefanos in United Cup, which is a great opportunity for us to learn from them.

“They opened the doors and showed the way. We are trying to follow.”

Team Greece, which reached the semi-finals at the inaugural edition of the United Cup in 2023, will open its Group B campaign against Chile on Tuesday at the Sydney Olympic Park’s Ken Rosewall Arena.

“We already can't wait,” said captain Petros Tsitsipas. “We're shortly going to proceed with our practices and get our strokes going, our feet going, get used to the conditions. For us, it's still early to really tell how it's going to go.”

The 19-year-old Sakellaridis, who memorably defeated Zizou Bergs (a player then 674 places above him in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings) during Greece’s 2023 United Cup run, added: “Playing a team tournament last year was really fun. Way more fun than playing alone. You can share the joy on the court. You can work outside the court as a team, so that gives you extra motivation to practice.”