FRIDAY SCHEDULE and PREVIEW | 2024 Indian Wells Open: Women's Semi-Finals including SWIATEK-KOSTYUK and GAUFF-SAKKARI

Finals weekend is here at the 2024 Indian Wells Open with the semi-finals set to take place on Friday in Tennis Paradise in California in the WTA side of the draw with the last four names remaining involved.

Our preview looks ahead to proceedings continuing in California with match previews for both ties as two big names in particular remain in contention.

The opening semi-final of Friday sees top seed Iga Swiatek involved as she aims to recapture the title she won back in 2022 when she faces off against Marta Kostyuk who is into her first ever WTA 1000 semi-final.

The Ukrainian has been steadily on the rise in the last 18 months and continues to add new strings to her bow so to speak. While Swiatek is the imperious player left in the draw in California. Aided yesterday by Caroline Wozniacki withdrawing, she has barely lost a game this tournament no mind a set and continues to be the stellar player left.

Kostyuk on the other hand has been fueled not by the drive to succeed in particular like Swiatek, but has been fueled by the war going on back in Ukraine and the adversity she has had to face both as a human and also those that her family have had to face in the past year. This rightfully or wrongfully has made her play some of the best tennis of her career so far and at only 21, it is very much the only way is up for Kostyuk whether Swiatek eases through to the final or not.

From adversity of the war to a lesser one but still adversity nonetheless as Maria Sakkari has been in torrid form for the last 12 months Guadalajara aside and ironically in her first full tournament with David Witt similar to Jessica Pegula in her first is going on a run.

It opened up the floodgates for Pegula and her career went from strength to strength from there. Sakkari has been fuelled in particular by people doubting her sticking a big middle finger up to the haters and saying herself that she has been in the top 10 up to recently for a long time so the proof has been in the pudding. But for the Greek, it is a new venom and having seen off Emma Navarro to reach this point, it is very much back with a vengeance.

But in facing Coco Gauff, she has the game to hurt the American. The Greek up to recently held a nearly flawless record against her leading 4-3 currently and only losing the last two meetings as of late. Gauff has been in and out form wise and as she showed against Yue Yuan, the game is certainly there to beat her. But it could be said that Navarro looked to be in the ascendancy when she beat Sabalenka and she fell upon Sakkari so like anything in WTA Tennis, it is easier said than done.

Not before 4:00pm local time - (31) Marta Kostyuk v (1) Iga Swiatek

Not before 6:00pm local time - (3) Coco Gauff v (9) Maria Sakkari