A year ago, Amanda Anisimova was going out of her way to ignore thoughts of Wimbledon after being unable to make the main draw. Now she has a final to look forward to. The American shocked world number one Aryna Sabalenka – and herself – to seal her place in Saturday’s showpiece, triumphing 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.
The 23-year-old will take on Poland’s Iga Swiatek in her first Grand Slam final after living up to the promise she had displayed in her teenage years a few years ago before stepping away for a long period to take care of her mental health.
“Honestly, if someone told me I’d be in the Wimbledon final, I wouldn’t believe them. Not so soon, anyway,” Anisimova said. It’s a year’s turnaround. To be in the final is just indescribable, honestly. Last year at this time, having lost in the third round of qualifying with a world ranking of 191, she was spending time with her friends and family to distract her from Wimbledon.
“Whenever I’m out of a Grand Slam or out of a tournament, I take a couple of days off. I don’t turn my phone off, but I don’t pay attention [to what is happening],” she explained. I like to just kind of chill and spend as much time as I can with whoever I’m with. That’s what I was doing [last year].”
Witnessed on Centre Court by her sister Maria and nephew Jaxson, who was celebrating his fourth birthday, and her closest friend and fellow player Priscilla Hon, who had called off a training session to attend, Anisimova was surrounded by her loved ones for various reasons on Thursday.
Delivering the type of big-hitting performance that she had shown six years ago in a breakthrough year when she reached the French Open semi-finals, she put herself one win away from a first major title. She is the second player in the Open era to make a women’s singles Grand Slam final after falling in qualifying at the event the year before last. The other woman to do this is Bianca Andreescu, who took the US Open in 2019.
She is only 23, but for a long time, Anisimova has been hailed as a Grand Slam finalist. She was the junior world number two at the age of 15, and she won the US Open girls’ title in 2017, where she defeated two-time Grand Slam singles champion Coco Gauff in the final.
A foot injury subsequently hindered her progress the next season, but then in 2019, she had a breakout year, winning her first WTA title at the age of 17 to be the youngest WTA winner on tour since Serena Williams 20 years before.
She took that form on into a stunning run to the French Open semi-finals, defeating defending champion Simona Halep and Sabalenka en route and eliciting prophecies of a rosy future career.
But she was brought up short a few months later following the sudden passing of her father Konstantin, who was also her coach, before the US Open. She had a poor time on court, and it was not until 2022 that she made another deep run at a Grand Slam, reaching the Wimbledon quarter-finals.
But she then sat out most of the 2023 season to prioritise her mental health before returning last year ranked outside the world’s top 400. She described this Wimbledon run as a “special message” to everyone who cautioned her against taking a break.
“A lot of people told me that you will never get back to the top again if you take so much time off from the game,” said Anisimova, who last month reached the final at Queen’s. Just being able to show that you can get back to the top if you focus on yourself has been so special to me.”
This Wimbledon run will elevate her to a career-high ranking within the world’s top 10, and she might become the third American woman to have won a Grand Slam title this year, following Madison Keys at the Australian Open and Coco Gauff at the French Open.
“Amanda Anisimova always possessed the potential, but she needed to reassemble everything so that she could play at the level she played today,” said former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli, who is a BBC pundit.
