Iga Swiatek beats Maria Sakkari again in BNP Paribas Open final

The second installment of Iga Swiatek vs. Maria Sakkari in the BNP Paribas Open final proved to be nearly a carbon-copy of the first.

After beating Sakkari 6-4, 6-1 to take the title in the California desert two years ago, Swiatek repeated the feat on Sunday 6-4, 6-0 to win her second title of the 2024 season and 19th of her career, becoming 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 4-4 in the opening set.

With "Challengers" film star Zendaya watching on, Swiatek raced out of the gates in Sunday's final, and built a 3-0 lead in 15 minutes as No. 9 seed Sakkari struggled to find her timing, and missed more balls than she made. But the Greek, who won four three-setters amongst her five wins to reach her fourth career WTA 1000 final, held from 0-30 down in the fourth game—and it soon seemed as though the match's tide was turning.

Sakkari won three straight 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. Her momentum continuned well into the second, where she lost just five points, and she scored her third bagel set in her six wins for the tournament.

"I'm really proud of myself," Swiatek said afterwards. "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 on the last two matches, 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. "I played opponents that sometimes I struggled with. I lost against Linda [Noskova] in Australia this year. Then I 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 split six career meetings, and all of them have been decided in straight sets.

Swiatek now heads to the Miami Open, where she will look to complete the Sunshine Double for a second time. One of only four women to win Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back, having first done so two years ago, the Pole hopes to join Steffi Graf in completing the feat twice.