The Indian Wells 2024 is the second time Iga Swiatek and Maria Sakkari faced off against each other in the BNP Paribas Open final. And it almost proved to be a carbon-copy of the first.
Swiatek defeated Sakkari 6-4, 6-1 to take the title in the California desert two years ago. Swiatek repeated the ordeal again on Sunday 6-4, 6-0 to win her second title of the 2024 season. That is Swiatek’s 19th title of her career as she became the 10th woman to win multiple titles in Indian Wells all-time.
In her sixth career meeting with Sakkari, Swiatek won the last eight games of the final from a tied score of 4-4 in the opening set.
Swiatek raced out of the gates in Sunday’s final, with “Challengers” film star Zendaya watching on. She built a lead of 3-0 after just 15 minutes into the match as No. 9 seed Sakkari struggled to find her timing. Sakkari also missed more balls than she made. But the 28-year-old who won four three-setters among her five wins to reach her fourth career WTA 1000 final, managed to hold from 0-30 down in the fourth game. And it soon appeared as though the momentum of the match was shifting against the Greek.
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The Greek won three consecutive games to level the first set at 3-3 and stayed close until 4-4. But Swiatek broke serve for a second time to wrap up a hard-fought first set. The Polish’s stride continued well into the second, where she lost just five points. This secured her a third bagel set in her six wins throughout the tournament.
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“I’m really proud of myself,” Swiatek said afterwards post-match. “I’m super happy, I mean, even though this tournament looked like, the scores, maybe I had everything under control, it wasn’t from the beginning to the end so easy.”
“So I’m happy I could improve during the tournament. I felt really good in the last two matches, with a big amount of confidence.”
“I would say at the beginning of the tournament I felt like I didn’t have much luck with the draw,” Swiatek continued. “Played opponents that sometimes I struggled with. Lost against Linda [Noskova] in Australia this year. Then was pretty stressed actually before facing Caroline Wozniacki [in the quarterfinals], because I felt like we haven’t played in a while. I didn’t really know how her game feels on my racquet. I just have huge respect for her. This was the kind of match where I had to kind of work through the stress.”
“But then after that I just felt like I could actually play my game more freely.”
Swiatek and Sakkari have now shared six career meetings, with all of them having been decided in straight sets.
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