Point-counterpoint: How Sakkari can upset Swiatek in the Indian Wells final

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- Coco Gauff is the No.3-ranked player among Hologic WTA players, but Iga Swiatek could be forgiven if she was subliminally rooting for the dangerous 20-year-old to advance to Sunday’s BNP Paribas Open final.

That’s because Gauff has lost to Swiatek nine of the 10 times they’ve played.

With Swiatek safely into the final after an earlier 6-2, 6-1 semifinal win over Marta Kostyuk on Friday, the fate of her eventual opponent played out over a drama that included two rain delays (no bees, though) and required more than five hours.

In the end, Gauff ran into some sterner stuff in Indian Wells. No. 9 seed Maria Sakkari was a 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2 winner, setting up the 11 a.m., PT final with Swiatek. She’s a perfect 5-0 in the desert under the guidance of new coach David Witt, who was formerly with Jessica Pegula.

How will this one play it out?

WTA Insider Courtney Nguyen and Greg Garber break down the matchup:

Advantage, Swiatek

Here are the scoring lines for Swiatek’s five scorching matches here in the desert:

6-3, 6-0

6-4, 6-0

6-1, 6-2

6-4, 1-0 (retired)

6-2, 6-1

The second result came against Linda Noskova, who knocked her out of the Australian Open in the third round. At the later stages of a WTA 1000 it’s supposed to get harder, but in the semifinal Marta Kostyuk could only manage three games.

Once again, Swiatek’s exploits require some historic context:

• Those 17 games dropped are the fewest coming into an Indian Wells final since Serena Williams in 2001.
• This is Swiatek’s 10^th WTA 1000 final; she’s the first to amass that total before the age of 23 since the format was instituted 15 years ago. She’s now advanced to a WTA 1000 final in 10 of the 27 she’s played, a 37 percent success rate, surpassing Serena’s 36.7.
• Her 17-2 record at Indian Wells (89.5 percent) equals Steffi Graf’s mark for highest winning percentage.

I’m not sure there are statistics that could make a better case for another finals victory. OK, since you asked, here’s another one -- or two:

Swiatek is a perfect 69-0 after taking the opening set in WTA 1000 events and 12-1 in matches this year.

After the semifinals, Swiatek was asked to assess her greatest strengths. She immediately listed, in order, her intensity, discipline and topspin.

“For sure, I needed to learn how to balance this intensity,” Swiatek said. “When I was younger, I was more of a defense player, and when I started working with [coach] Tomasz [Wiktorowski], he taught me how to be more aggressive, but then you need to balance it.

The discipline came when [psychologist] Daria [Abramowicz] came on the team, and she taught me how to be more focused.”

There you have it, Courtney. The evolution of Iga in three sentences. -- Greg Garber

Advantage, Sakkari

I cannot argue with the absurd numbers that Swiatek already compiled before she's even turned 23. As the WTA Twitter account put it yesterday, she is inevitable. 

Well, at least according to the numbers.

But Swiatek will be the first to tell anyone who will listen that statistics and past accomplishments do not win tennis matches. That's actually good news for her because Sakkari is one of the handful of players on tour who knows how to beat her. The Greek star is one of just four players to have faced Swiatek multiple times and hold a winning record, along with Ashleigh Barty (2-0), Elena Rybakina (3-2) and Jelena Ostapenko (4-0).

Momentum does count for something, and Sakkari has done incredible work over the fortnight to pull her season out of a nosedive and land in her fourth WTA 1000 final and first final at any level since she won the biggest title of her career last fall in Guadalajara. That title should have lifted the monkey off her back -- it was her first since 2019 -- but Sakkari sputtered in its wake instead. After winning her first four matches of the season she lost four of her next five. 

But instead of being (1) stubborn or (2) begrudgingly accepting her fate, Sakkari shook things up. She believes she has more to give and she'll do whatever it takes to prove that. She changed racquets during the offseason. Then, in February, she changed coaches. Now in the California desert, she's ending droughts. 

Her win over Gauff snapped a five-match losing streak to Top 10 opponents. In fact, it was her first Top 3 win since 2022. After losing four of her last five three-set matches, Sakkari has won four here. In two weeks she's won as many matches as she did in the first two months of the season.

"We always say in tennis one day can change everything, but a month ago I was in Abu Dhabi, I couldn't hit a ball over the net, and now I'm just here in one of the biggest tournaments playing another final," she said. "It's just that those are lessons and those are things that you have to just accept the more you're on the tour that you're going to have some bad times, and then things can really change in a week."

In other words, forget the numbers, the trends, the sense of inevitability. Sakkari is proof that your luck can change in a heartbeat. Don't count her out. -- Courtney Nguyen