The BNP Paribas Open will send 2026 into a higher gear. Which of the women could use a kick start of her own?

When it comes to the state of the WTA right now, there are similarities to where the tour was at this time last year. In 2025, Madison Keys edged Aryna Sabalenka in a close Australian Open final, before Mirra Andreeva showed off her star potential by winning her first 1000 at the Dubai Duty Free Championships. This year, Elena Rybakina did the same thing to Sabalenka in Melbourne, while Jessica Pegula took home the trophy in Dubai and closed in on the No. 4 spot in the rankings.

So we know who has been in form. How about the players who need to find their A-game before the Sunshine Double, and the many rankings points it offers, comes and goes? Here’s a look at five of them.

Iga Swiatek

Rank: 2

2025 IW Result: Semifinal

Swiatek is one of the many players who can’t wait to get to Indian Wells each season. The weather, the air, the mountains, the courts: Whatever it is, she loves it. And it shows: She won the title there in 2022 and 2024.

Both of those years, though, Swiatek got to the desert with a win in Doha under her belt, and the confidence that came with it. This year, while she helped Poland to a team title at United Cup, she won’t arrive on the same high note. She has played just two tournaments since, losing in the quarterfinals at the Australian Open and in Doha. She pulled out of Dubai to better prepare for IW.

That last fact may be a promising one: She was willing to forego a Dubai payday to get back to her winning ways in Indian Wells. Also promising are the slow hard courts, which are made for her. An early loss could drop her to No. 3, behind Rybakina, in the rankings.

Coco Gauff

Rank: 4

2025 IW Result: 4th round

Gauff knows what she’ll be facing when she gets to California: An American audience that will be rooting hard for her…and sending up prayer every time she tosses the ball to serve. After two months away from home, the pressure to make the home folks happy will be on.

Is she ready? It’s always hard to know with Gauff. She goes through slumps, and then she goes through hot streaks, but you’re never quite sure when they’re going to begin and end. So far, her 2026 has been cause for cautious optimism: She made the Australian Open quarters and the Dubai semis, losing to Elina Svitolina both times. Her service issues haven’t been cured, but they haven’t ruined her season, either. That counts as progress.

Last year, Coco didn’t put her game in gear until the clay season. But she must want to get started earlier this time around, especially when she’s in the States for the next month, and especially when she’s on the slow hard courts in Indian Wells. Surprisingly, she has never been past the semifinals there. With Rybakina leapfrogging her in the rankings, and Pegula closing in, she could use a home-court advantage right now.

Mirra Andreeva

Rank: 8

2025 IW Result: Champion

Starting last week, Andreeva began a process that all great young players must deal with: She went from hunter to hunted.

In February 2025, at 17, she won her first 1000-level event, in Dubai. Which meant that this year, she had to defend her first 1000-level in the same place. She reached the quarters; that’s not a disastrous result, but it still dropped her a spot in the rankings, from 7 to 8.

In March 2025, Andreeva followed up her Dubai breakthrough with an even bigger in Indian Wells. She beat Swiatek and Sabalenka back to back in the semifinals and final, each time in three sets. The sky, even at her young age, suddenly seemed to be the limit.

Instead, it turned out that Andreeva had peaked. She wouldn’t reach another final in 2025. The talent is still there, of course, and Grand Slam titles are still in her future—just a little farther into that future than we might have thought a year ago. She began 2026 with a title run in Adelaide.

But now her prodigy era is over. It’s time for Andreeva to learn to defend, to play with ranking points and expectations on the line.

Emma Navarro

Rank: 20

2025 IW Result: 3rd round

In 2024 at Indian Wells, Navarro announced herself as a top-tier contender when she upset Sabalenka to make the quarterfinals. Two years after that meteoric rise, she’ll come to the desert looking to stop, or at least pause, her current free fall.

Navarro is 4-7 on the year, and she’s coming off a title defense in Merida that ended with another first-round loss. Even the woman who beat her, Zhang Shuai, said she didn’t really “do anything special.” The ground strokes that Navarro was rifling into the corners in 2024 are finding the net or flying long now. It’s gotten to the point that even the poker-faced South Carolinian—known to her family as “Ice”—is showing a sign or two of frustration on the court.

This can happen, of course; winning leads to more of the same, and so does losing. Navarro has proven she’s a big-stage performer, and her timing is as pure as anyone’s. She may just need a solid result or two to turn it around. The good thing about tennis is that there’s always another opportunity. The fans in Indian Wells will be there to help.

Zheng Qinwen

Rank: 24

2025 IW Result: Quarterfinals

A big result is admittedly a lot to ask from the 23-year-old right now. Elbow surgery kept her off the tour for the second half of 2025, and this will be just her third event since Wimbledon last year.

But last month in Doha, Zheng did win two matches, before losing to the tour’s most in-form player, Elena Rybakina, 7-5 in the third. And last spring she showed an aptitude for tennis in the desert, winning three matches in Indian Wells. The clay season will likely be where she begins to dig deeper, but she would be a welcome re-addition to the mix during the Sunshine Double.