Amanda Anisimova’s Resilient Return | The New Yorker
Last week at the Australian Open, Amanda Anisimova played much of her second round match against Kateřina Siniaková, demonstrating her superior power and precision. Few players hit the ball as hard and flat, or as accurately, as Anisimova, and no one has a softer or more vicious backhand. To watch her line up, pull up and sweep her racket along the arc created by her powerful spin – her legs perfectly weighted, her spacing correctly calculated, her point of pure contact – is to realize the full potential of the shot. She won the first set easily, 6-1, and led a break of serve in the second; then his control of the match began to slip away. Siniaková, the world’s No. 1 doubles player, started to mess things up and Anisimova’s serve started to slip away. Two drawn-out exchanges of two ended in favor of Siniaková. Anisimova insisted. After a long setback, his hands went to his hips in frustration. Anisimova won the third straight match by two points, but made two double faults. The players were serving, tied 4-4, but tennis is as much a psychological game as a physical one, and Siniaková had the advantage. Anisimova looked like she was about to collapse.
She exchanged a word with the people present in her dressing room. Then, visibly calmer, she quickly concluded the victory. Afterward, he was asked about the back-and-forth sequence of games. “That’s what I love about this sport, it’s those really intense moments,” she said. “I really appreciate it,” she added. Perhaps there was a bit of revisionism, or masochism, in his response. But I was inclined to believe her. After all, what’s the worst that could have happened? Could she lose a tennis match?
Anisimova knows what it’s like to lose a tennis match. She knows what it’s like to be humiliated on the field, on the biggest stage, with the biggest crowd of spectators. Wimbledon, Center Court, a princess sitting next to Billie Jean King in the royal box, champagne in the stands and flowers everywhere decorating the court. It’s a dream come true, and last July, as Anisimova walked out into the sunshine to greet that stage and a cheering crowd, she overcame the residual momentum from her Wimbledon semifinal performance, after beating Aryna Sabalenka, the world No. 1 player, by displaying the kind of courageous and powerful tennis that had been expected of her for so long. Her path to the final was all the more inspiring given that two years earlier she had taken an eight-month break from the sport and then suffered a series of injuries upon her return; the year before, she didn’t even reach the main draw at Wimbledon and lost in the third qualifying round. But, rather than a dream, her journey to the final was a nightmare: a 6-0, 6-0 thrashing by Iga Świątek, in less than an hour. Anisimova sobbed during the trophy presentation.
But this deep disappointment apparently lasted only a moment: thirty minutes later, she was on the phone with a friend, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. And a few weeks later, when she had to face Świątek again, in the quarterfinals of the US Open, she did something almost unimaginable: the evening before, she watched the replay of the Wimbledon final. No one told her to do it, but she had to understand what she had done wrong, she later explained, and she had to be able to overcome it. She wouldn’t let this loss define her.
Anisimova’s life has revolved around tennis almost since birth. Her parents moved from Moscow to New Jersey and then to Miami in order to cultivate their daughters’ tennis careers: first Maria, who continued to play in college, and then Amanda, who competed in her first professional tournament at fourteen. A few days after her sixteenth birthday, she defeated Coco Gauff, then thirteen, to win the 2017 US Open women’s title; the following year, she beat two of the twenty-five best players at Indian Wells. In 2019, she beat eleventh-seeded Sabalenka at the Australian Open, and reached the semi-finals of the French Open. By the time the US Open came around, she was being talked about as the next big thing. ESPN published an article titled “Inside Amanda Anisimova’s Plan to Become Tennis’ Next Superstar,” which described her as savvy and determined. But the “plan” seemed less his own than a vision of those around him. In the article, her agent discussed his strategy to make her a star like Maria Sharapova, whom he also represented, but more accessible. (She was encouraged to post photos of her breakfast on social media.) Her trainer and physical therapist described it, enthusiastically, as a “project.”
It was hard to blame them. I saw her play in Miami that year, and seeing her technique and power up close, I was as fascinated by her potential as everyone else. I had planned to write about her on the eve of the US Open and was in a taxi on my way to the tournament when I received a call informing me that the interview had to be canceled because her father had died suddenly.
