Maria Sakkari held off Coco Gauff 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2 on Friday night to reach the BNP Paribas Open final, where she'll face top-ranked Iga Swiatek.
There were delays of 20 minutes and two hours during the semifinal between third-seeded Gauff and ninth-seeded Sakkari.
Sakkari broke Gauff twice in taking a 5-2 lead in the second set. But Gauff won four straight games and fought off three match points in the 10th game to take a 6-5 lead.There were break points in each of the first six games of the third. After dropping serve to open the set, Sakkari twice broke Gauff and then held for a 4-1 lead. She held again to go up 5-2 and then one hour and 10 minutes after her first three match points, Sakkari hit a forehand winner to set up her fourth.
Swiatek won the 2022 tournament as part of a 37-match winning streak. She had advanced to the semis whenretired trailing 6-4, 1-0 in their quarterfinal. Swiatek has lost just 17 games through the semis. Kostyuk hit 17 winners to 14 for Swiatek in the match. But Swiatek was better in nearly every other facet and didn't face a break point. Swiatek connected on 74% of her first serves, won 83% of her first-serve points and 50% of her second-serve points on a cool and windy evening in the Southern California desert.
"It was the cleanest match I played here," Swiatek said in an on-court interview."I didn't really have any moment today in the match where I didn't feel confident."
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