Indian Wells quarterfinal recap: Elena Rybakina takes world No. 2 spot from Iga Świątek

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The quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells are in the books, and it’s time for the last fours to slug it out in California’s Coachella Valley.

Here are the matches and players that have stood out, some things tennis fans may have missed, and what to look out for as the tournament heads into its concluding weekend.

A change at the top of the WTA Tour rankings

Elena Rybakina’s prize for beating Jessica Pegula 6-1, 7-6(4) on Thursday was twofold: She earned a spot in the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open for the first time since she won the title here in 2023 and also secured a career-high ranking.

Rybakina, the reigning Australian Open champion, will move up a spot and, for the first time, rise to world No. 2 come Monday.

She takes over that position from Iga Świątek, after Elina Svitolina beat her, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, in a quarterfinal that so frustrated the 24-year-old Pole that she was exchanging shouts with her team as the defeat unfolded.

Svitolina-Świątek pitted hot streak against hot streak. Świątek entered the match with a 23-2 record in the California desert since 2022 and had been rolling in this tournament, dictating matches with ease. But no player has won more in these early weeks of 2026 than Svitolina, who took advantage of the court’s faster pace due to Thursday’s 95F (35C) heat and improved to 19-3 on the season. Both players found controlling the ball difficult. Svitolina just did it better.

“It’s not only against (Świątek), but I think just generally trying to be more aggressive, trying to go for my shots,” the No. 9 seed, who takes on Rybakina next, said in her news conference.

“There is no champion who is waiting for the mistakes, and you have to really try to set yourself up in a good position to attack.”

Rybakina was in attack mode all match against Pegula, winning 75 percent of points on her first serve. With Aryna Sabalenka facing No. 14 seed Linda Nosková in Friday’s other semifinal, a rematch of January’s Australian Open final is still in play.

First though, Rybakina has to get past Svitolina.

— Ava Wallace

Victoria Mboko got closer, but how did Aryna Sabalenka’s experience tell?

Aryna Sabalenka won their BNP Paribas Open quarterfinal Thursday afternoon, but for a good while on Stadium 1 at Indian Wells, Victoria Mboko proved she is getting closer to those at the very top of the women’s game.

Sabalenka, the world No. 1, beat Mboko, the rising 19-year-old Canadian upstart, 7-6(0), 6-4 in a match that was razor-tight most of the way, especially in the first set. Mboko had her chances, earning 5 break points on the afternoon — no easy feat, given Sabalenka’s recent serving form. Sabalenka, though, was just a little bit better when she needed to be.

She broke Mboko once from 8 break points, compared with no breaks for Mboko. And yet Mboko made Sabalenka seriously uncomfortable, especially as she crowded her second serve and pounded returns that Sabalenka sometimes had to watch whistle by. She is more used to doing that to her opponents than having it done to her.

“Sometimes I was maybe one or two points away from changing how the first set would have went, changing the momentum,” Mboko said in her news conference.

This was only their second meeting.

In their first, at this year’s Australian Open, Sabalenka had won more easily by cruising through the first set before Mboko found her feet and played the second to a tiebreak. She lost that, as she lost the one Thursday, but nobody on the WTA Tour is beating Sabalenka in tiebreaks at the moment: she is 24-2 in them over the past year.

“Big improvement,” Sabalenka said of Mboko. “She was serving much better than she did in that match in Australia.”

Mboko didn’t disagree. She’s going step-by-step, but those steps are going quickly.

“I don’t feel totally different, but I feel like I’m learning a lot, and I feel like that helps me prepare even more for the next match to come,” she said. “Do I feel like I’m different myself? Not much. But I guess in my tactics, game plan, the way I execute my shots, might be a little bit more different than how I would approach them last time.”

For Sabalenka, the result is a Friday semifinal against Linda Nosková, who has enjoyed a tournament played on high-bouncing, slower courts just as she did the 2025 China Open in Beijing last October, when she reached the final. Nosková overcame a spirited performance from qualifier Talia Gibson, winning 6-2, 4-6, 6-2 to reach her second WTA 1000 semifinal. She won the other one.

— Matt Futterman

How did Jannik Sinner beat Learner Tien at his own game?

When a player wins a match 6-1, 6-2, and outscores their opponent 60-37, pretty much everything went right.

What might have been most interesting about Jannik Sinner’s quarterfinal demolition of Learner Tien Thursday afternoon was how different it looked from his slugfest triumph over João Fonseca Tuesday night in the previous round.

That match with Fonseca was power tennis at its utmost. Against Tien, Sinner didn’t hit the ball harder than he needed. He also found a lot of love when he played angles and joysticked Tien across the baseline — something the latter has done extremely effectively against his own opponents during his rise up the rankings during the past year.

The numbers told that story.

Sinner won 18 cross-court forehand or backhand points, and produced poor results on those plays just 9 times, according to data from Tennis Data Innovations.

When he dealt out wide from the middle, he won points 9 times and lost them just 3. The forehand down the line was deadly, too, leading to success 10 times compared with just four failures.

Even more striking was how Sinner, who dictates so many matches, took Tien’s attacks out of his hands. He won 55 percent of the points he played on defense, meaning that Tien did not convert even half of his attacking opportunities. Sinner’s tour average for the metric is 38 percent.

That is Tien’s game to a T. He sends opponents on the run, opens the court, and hits to the open space. He makes players think they have won a point, and then snatches it from their grasp.

The young American is 10-5 on the year and has made the quarterfinals or better in three of five tournaments. It’s just really hard to win his way against someone who is even better at playing the angles than you are.

Sinner now faces world No. 4 Alexander Zverev in the semifinals. Zverev, who outplayed Arthur Fils in a 6-2, 6-3 win, is just the fifth player to reach the semifinals of all nine ATP Masters 1000 tournaments, after Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray.

— Matt Futterman

A familiar matchup?

After Daniil Medvedev’s comprehensive and belatedly controversial win over Jack Draper in their quarterfinal, Carlos Alcaraz came out to face Cameron Norrie, one of the few players outside of Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic who has troubled him the past few years.

He did so again in fits and starts Thursday night.

Norrie managed to force Alcaraz to come forward more than he needed to, because his awkward, low backhand into the Spaniard’s forehand made baseline rallies uncomfortable. He managed to send tricky returns back when his opponent serve-and-volleyed. His stock game, with a spinning forehand and a skidding backhand, did what it normally does and sowed some doubt in Alcaraz’s mind.

And yet he was outclassed in every department, as Alcaraz belied those difficulties to surge into his fifth Indian Wells semifinal, which remains his worst result at this tournament outside of his first appearance in 2021, when he lost to Andy Murray in the second round. The world No. 1 triumphed 6-3, 6-4, never truly uncomfortable despite his moments of frustration with Norrie’s awkward tennis and some scratchy errors sprinkled through the match.

“It’s kind of confusing sometimes,” Alcaraz said of playing the Brit in his on-court interview. “Tennis is about choosing the right shot within a second, so sometimes I missed the shot because I didn’t choose the right one. In my mind I have, like, seven options, so sometimes it’s tricky for me to choose the right shot.”

The win sets up Alcaraz’s third meeting with Medvedev at Indian Wells. The other two were finals, both of which the Spaniard won. The Russian has been loving the conditions in the Coachella Valley this year, especially on the quicker Stadium 2; the slower Stadium 1 court will ask him to generate a little more ball speed of his own.

— James Hansen

 Up next: Women’s semifinals

🎾 Aryna Sabalenka (1) vs. Linda Nosková (14)

7 p.m. ET (11 p.m. UK) on Tennis Channel/Sky Sports

World No. 1 Sabalenka is back in another Indian Wells semifinal, after performing imperiously for most of the tournament. When she has been a little ragged, she has won in straight sets anyway. Nosková has taken a more circuitous route to her second WTA 1000 semifinal, but her game is suited to the conditions at Indian Wells, especially on its hotter days, and has the power to take the match out of Sabalenka’s hands — if Sabalenka does not do it to her first.

🎾 Elena Rybakina (3) vs. Elina Svitolina (9)

Not before 9 p.m. ET (1 a.m. Saturday) on Tennis Channel/Sky Sports

Rybakina and Svitolina’s head-to-head stands at 3-3, spread across all three surfaces. Svitolina used the slicker conditions of Stadium 2 to help upset Iga Świątek Thursday afternoon; now on Stadium 1, she may be able to take the ball out of Rybakina’s strike zone more often. Rybakina, who will be the new world No. 2 Monday whatever the result in this one, played her cleanest match of the tournament to beat Jessica Pegula Thursday. She will hope to go up one more level.

Tell us what you noticed in the quarterfinals…

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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