Iga Swiatek isn’t a fan of increasing the number of tournaments that she and her colleagues are mandated to play. She’s not a fan of making them longer, either. But she’ll make an exception for Indian Wells. On Friday, she sounded as if she wouldn’t mind moving the entire WTA tour to the desert.
“I thought about this tournament from the start of the year, that I just want to be here,” the Warsaw native told the Southern California crowd. “I always come here and find myself even more motivated then I usually am.”
She has the receipts to back those words up. While Doha is where Swiatek traditionally gets her season underway in earnest, it’s in Indian Well where she tends to achieve liftoff and separate herself from the pack. In her breakout year of 2022, she won the title as the No. 3 seed, gaining momentum with each match. In 2024, she dropped just 22 games in a six-match show of dominance. Both years she maintained that form all the way, or virtually all the way, through Roland Garros.
Swiatek’s start to 2025 has been a little different. She’s No. 2, rather than No. 1, and she hasn’t won a title. Doha didn’t bring out her best this time, and in Dubai she lost a possibly ominous straight-setter to 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, a player who may be challenging her for bigger titles sooner than she likes. All of which only added to the urgency of getting to the peaceful confines of Indian Wells.
