Maria Sakkari (No.6) is once again making an impressive run and her presence in the Indian Wells semi-finals is a huge shot at a big jump in the world rankings.

Opposite her he finds Paula Bandosa (#7) and everything shows that In the early morning hours of Saturday (19/03, approximately at 05.00) we will have the opportunity to see a huge fight that, as we will see below, will judge a lot in the world rankings, but also further two athletes .

Let’s not forget that the higher an athlete is in the world rankings, the easier it is theoretically in tournaments. Because the fact that one of the two will be in the top four automatically means that he will not find a top 4 athlete on his way to the semi-finals in the next or even the next tournaments.

The history of the matches and the way to the semifinals

The two were only confronted once. To be more precise, in the group phase of the WTA Finals, where Bandosa prevailed in a closed match 2:0, 7:6 (4), 6:4.

Sakkari reached the semifinals without dropping a set, eliminating Siniakova, Kvitova, Savil and Rybakina in turn. On the other hand, the 24-year-old Spaniard has not lost that set in her career so far, skipping Martincova, Soribes Tormo, Fernandes and Kundermetova.

One element that can play a role in the match is that Sakkari has almost two hours less on the court as her matches have lasted almost five hours while the Spaniard’s have lasted almost seven.

Cash prizes and world ranking data

From there, we need to look at what’s at stake in the game. The first of these is the position in the world rankings.

If Sakkari succeeds in qualifying for the final next Monday (March 21), he will rise to at least 3rd place in the world rankings, with a defeat 6th place is inevitable. If he wins the title, he will rise to 2nd place in the world rankings.

On the opposite bank, Bandosa rises to fourth place on a win while staying in sixth place on a loss. If the Spaniard wins the cup, she will be third next Monday.

The two athletes secured $343,985 in cash prizes with their presence in the semifinals. Whoever of them makes it to the final gets nearly double that ($646,110), while winning the trophy earns the winner $1.2 million.