INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- Top seeds Hsieh Su-Wei and Elise Mertens will face No.3 seeds Storm Hunter and Katerina Siniakova in the BNP Paribas Open final on Saturday.
All four women in Saturday's final are current or former doubles World No.1s, winning 83 doubles titles between them. Mertens, Hsieh and Hunter are currently ranked No.1, No.2 and No.3, respectively. Mertens and Hunter were voted the Doubles Team of the Year last year before going their separate ways in the off-season. Hunter paired with Siniakova immediately after the Czech split with her longtime partner Barbora Krejcikova.
A full-time team for the first time this season, Hsieh and Mertens started their year off by winning the Australian Open title. They beat Hunter and Siniakova in the quarterfinals, winning 7-5, 1-6, 6-3 in one of the best matches of the tournament.
Hunter and Siniakova are looking to capture their second title of the season after winning their first team title last month at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. It is the first trip to Indian Wells' Championship Saturday for Hunter and the fourth for Siniakova, who won the title last year with Krejcikova.
Champions in 2021, Hsieh and Mertens secured a spot in their second Indian Wells final with a 6-2, 7-6(5) win over No.4 seeds and San Diego champions Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Ellen Perez. That win came on the heels of a dominant 6-1, 6-4 win over No.6 seeds Demi Schuurs and Luisa Stefani in the quarterfinals.
As they set to face each other for a second time this season, neither team has lost a set in the California desert. Hunter and Siniakova advanced to their second straight WTA 1000 final after defeating Asia Muhammad and Ena Shibahara 6-4, 6-4. The Australian-Czech duo raced to a 3-0 lead in the first set and dominated the remaining stages of the match with their aggressive play.
