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We rolled the tape, and this week, TENNIS.com is counting down some of the best WTA matches of the past year (with our ATP picks to come next week). Our countdown continues with the best WTA 1000 matches of the year, inclusive of all of the tour’s crown-jewel events. Who rose to the occasion best on the biggest stages?

5. Maria Sakkari def. Coco Gauff, Indian Wells SF
2024 ended up as a year Maria Sakkari will likely want to forget: The Greek won back-to-back matches at just six tournaments before a shoulder injury derailed her after the Olympics and, eventually, brought her season to an early end.

But a bright spot for the 29-year-old came at March’s BNP Paribas Open, where she reached her second career WTA 1000 final before losing to Iga Swiatek. Under what eventually was a short-lived partnership with coach David Witt, ninth-seeded Sakkari beat Diana Shnaider, Caroline Garcia, Diane Parry and Emma Navarro (both Shnaider and Navarro won the first set, and Sakkari also went the distance vs. Parry) to set up a semifinal against Coco Gauff, whom she’d beaten four times previously, but had lost both of their 2023 matches.

Sakkari looked on course to an easy victory when she built a 6-4, 5-2 lead, but it soon became anything but. In a clash that lasted nearly three hours, and was delayed by rain twice, Sakkari ended up outlasting Gauff 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-2. The two-hour, 42-minute victory ended the Greek’s five-match losing streak to Top 10 opposition and was her first win over a player ranked in the Top 3 in more than a year.

“I knew from the beginning it was going to be very tough,” she told reporters. “You know, a lot of things happened today. Rain delays, obviously, that second set could have been different. But I was thinking of that finish line too much, and then I was just thinking too much on how to close out the match. That didn’t really help me. It freaked me out a little bit. I was too nervous.

“But, you know, I’m very proud of myself that I kept my nerves, and then I just fought hard in that third set.”

Sakkari’s spring was fruitful after a scuffling start to the season, one where she admitted that she felt like she “couldn’t hit a ball over the net.” Though she lost 6-4, 6-0 to Swiatek in the final, Sakkari went deep in her next two events, with a quarterfinal effort in Miami and semifinal showing in Charleston.