Indian Wells: Swiatek beats Sakkari to clinch title

Iga Swiatek rolled to her second BNP Paribas Open title by toppling Maria Sakkari 6-4, 6-0. Swiatek won the final eight games of the match Sunday to knock off Sakkari for the second time in two years in Indian Wells.

Swiatek now owns eight career WTA 1000 titles, and 19 career Hologic WTA Tour titles in all. She’s now won at least two titles in each of the last four seasons.

“I am really proud of myself,” Swiatek said after the 68-minute match. “I’m super happy. I mean, even though this tournament looked like, the sco-)res, 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. I played opponents that sometimes I struggled with. I lost against Linda [Nosva] 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.”

Sakkari and Swiatek were the third pair of players to meet in multiple finals in Indian Wells, joining Martina Hingis and Lindsay Davenport (1998, 2000) and Kim Clijsters and Lindsay Davenport (2003, 2005). The two have now split six career meetings, all of which have been decided in straight sets, and Swiatek has won the past three.