Iga Swiatek bested Maria Sakkari two years ago in the Indian Wells final to win the trophy, and she did it again this year.
The Indian Wells Open has a hint of nostalgia this year. On the men's side, we have the same final we had a year ago, with Carlos Alcaraz set to face Daniil Medvedev. On the women's side, we have the same matchup we saw in the 2022 final.
Like that year, Swiatek and Sakkari proved to be the best players, making the run to the final. It was the Polish player who won that match comfortably in two sets and the same thing happened this time as well. The Polish player started well, taking an early 3-0 lead.
Nobody was really shocked by that, but what was surprising was that the Greek battled back and made it 3-3. Nobody really saw that coming, and after two more games, the score was 4-4. It was a pretty close match, but eventually Swiatek broke once more and finished off the set 6-4.
The second set wasn't remotely close because the loss of the first set impacted Sakkari quite a bit. She's not a player who's known for being very tough mentally, and she couldn’t make a comeback in this one.
A pretty good demonstration of that is that she won only one point on her serve in that second set. They played 13 rallies on Sakkari’s serve in the second set, and in those three games, she won only one point. On return, she won four points, which was better but not that great either.
In the end, the final score was 6-4 6-0, which is very similar to the 6-4 6-1 score they had in 2022. Two years have passed but Swiatek is queen of the desert once more.
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