Who Will Win: Iga Swiatek or Maria Sakkari, 2024 Indian Wells women's final

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—Sunday's BNP Paribas Open final will be a rematch of 2022's championship match, with former champion Iga Swiatek up against a resurgent Maria Sakkari, who won a late-night thriller against Coco Gauff on Friday.

When they last faced off in the desert, Swiatek had just begun her march towards the No. 1 ranking, a mantle she has only briefly ceded in the two years that have followed. Sakkari, by contrast, has struggled to match Swiatek's blistering pace as inconsistent results have damaged her standing among the game's top players.

Who will win the 2024 BNP Paribas Open? David Kane and Stephanie Livaudais discuss the finalists in a Drop Shot Debate:

Steph's Pick: Iga Swiatek

LIVAUDAIS: World No. 1 Swiatek is through to the Indian Wells final for the second time in three years. Is anyone surprised? It might be hard to imagine now, but after her early exit from the Australian Open and “only” one WTA title to her name this year in Doha, Swiatek's performances didn’t inspire a lot of confidence ahead of the Sunshine Swing. In fact, when polled only two of our nine Tennis editors picked Swiatek to reach the final.

But Swiatek has, once again, proven that she can shut out the noise and let her results speak for themselves—and so far, her racquet has been loud and clear. She was tested from the start with a nightmare draw that saw her face big-hitting Danielle Collins—a rematch of their 2022 Australian Open semifinal—in the first round. Swiatek passed with flying colors, 6-3, 6-0. In the second round, she took down No. 26 seed Linda Noskova—the player who eliminated her in Melbourne—with a statement 6-4, 6-0 win. The top seed then breezed past Yulia Putintseva and former world No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki, before cooling off the red-hot Marta Kostyuk in a 6-2, 6-1 semifinal rout.

READ MORE: Iga Swiatek rolls into second BNP Paribas Open final, dismantles Marta Kostyuk in semis

Swiatek hasn’t just reached the Indian Wells final without dropping a set—she’s done so without losing more than four games in the same match. It would be hard to bet against her in the final, especially against Sakkari, despite the latter's 3-2 lead in their head-to-head record. The Greek won their first three meetings, but all of those came before 2022 and, since then, Swiatek has risen to world No. 1 and added three more Grand Slams to her trophy haul. That means she will likely play more like the Swiatek who steamrolled Sakkari 6-4, 6-1 in their most recent meeting: the 2022 Indian Wells final.

DK's Pick: Maria Sakkari

KANE: Swiatek has reached two out of the last three BNP Paribas Open finals, but so has Sakkari, who has tended to play her best tennis—through what has largely been three tumultuous seasons—at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. She's the ninth best player in world according to the WTA rankings, and yet arrived in the desert so far off the radar she barely registered after starting the season with a paltry 5-4 record and parting ways with longtime coach Tom Hill. Not even her signature result, a WTA 1000 title last fall in Guadalajara, has been enough to convince pundits that the fittest player on tour was close to the form that took her to a career-high of No. 3 only two years ago.

But something seems to have changed for Sakkari in the desert. She hired new coach David Witt—who has compiled an impressive resume from successful partnerships with Venus Williams and Jessica Pegula—and has played positive tennis through five matches, outrallying former No. 4 Caroline Garcia and cooling off an in-form Emma Navarro en route to the semifinals.

READ MORE: Can David Witt put Maria Sakkari's famous intensity to better use?

It was in the last four where she posted her most noteworthy scalp, weathering multiple rain delays and a second-set wobble to shock Coco Gauff, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2—her first Top 5 win since last summer. Can she replicate the form she produced to defeat the reigning US Open winner against Swiatek, a four-time major champion, on Sunday? There was a time when Sakkari dominated their head-to-head, winning all three of their meetings in 2021, and is even the last woman to beat Swiatek at Roland Garros. The world No. 1 has since closed the gap in their rivalry and defeated Sakkari at this tournament in 2022.

Still, the combination of new energy and building momentum has given Sakkari a new look in the last two weeks, and she will represent a big step up for Swiatek, who has largely gone unchallenged to reach the final. And a win in the final would mean few would ever overlook Sakkari again.

WATCH: Swiatek was ruthless in the first semifinal against Marta Kostyuk, dismissing the Ukrainian youngster in just over an hour.