Mumbai: The few gasps made way for absolute silence as Iga Swiatek, on the stretch, tried a defensive lob from her forehand side. Most in the Arthur Ashe Stadium moved to the edge of their seats as Amanda Anisimova, with racquet cocked and eyes on the lofted tennis ball, moved forward.
Anisimova connected sweetly, and immediately let out a roar with a pumped fist. Her entire player box was on its feet.
This was only the second game of the match, and only the first one that Anisimova had won. But that’s exactly why it was important. She had broken a daunting duck.
On July 12, Anisimova faced Swiatek in the Wimbledon final. That match lasted 57 minutes, and the American became the third player in Grand Slam history to lose a women’s singles final 6-0, 6-0.
But winning that game, which levelled the score at 1-1 after Swiatek had broken serve first, changed the way Anisimova would perform in the US Open quarter-final on Wednesday. The monkey was off her back, and after an hour and 36 minutes of play, Anisimova scored an impressive 6-4, 6-3 win.
“Winning that first game took some stress off my shoulders,” she said in the post-match press conference. “Once I got that game, I was easing into the match. I wasn’t really worried about it. I knew I was playing some good tennis all week.”
This has been an astonishing turnaround for the 24-year-old, who has now become the first American woman since Venus and Serena Williams in 2002 to reach the semi-finals of a clay (French Open 2019), grass (Wimbledon 2025) and hard court major. The buildup to the match on Wednesday was dominated by the double-bagel from their previous meeting.
Anisimova couldn’t escape it. She explained that the match was being played on the television in the gym where she was doing her warmups. But she chose to embrace it.
“(On Tuesday), nobody told me to, but I watched it back. Just to see what to avoid or what went wrong. Afterwards I watched some good highlights to remove that from my brain,” she said, with a laugh. “I think it was important for me to see what happened going into today’s match.”
She explained that her takeaways from the Wimbledon match was that her reactions were too slow on the night, mostly from the exhausting run to the final. “That’s something I’m working on, to be physically fit to last two weeks,” she added.
But the most important difference between the two matches was a change in mindset.
“Today I really came out there with not an ounce of fear,” she said. “When I started this tournament, I was going into the matches with a little bit of fear. And maybe holding back a bit. As I’ve been progressing and going into matches more and more, I told myself you can’t go into a match with any fear, especially when you’re playing against top players. Because if I want to win the match I’m going to have to play really brave and strong tennis.”
That’s exactly what she did.
Anisimova’s serve was broken at the first time of asking in each set. Yet she made her way back into the match, hitting the angles and making the world No.2 uncomfortable in rallies.
In all, she hit 23 winners and committed only 12 unforced errors, against Swiatek’s tally of 13 and 15 respectively.
Preparation for the match, she said, was more mental than physical. In fact, focus on the mental aspect has been a crucial element in Anisimova’s development.
So much so that, as a rapidly improving young player then ranked No.25 in the world, she decided to take an indefinite break from the sport in 2023 to address her mental health. She only returned last year, ranked as low as 442, but started to pick up the pieces – she’s currently ranked No.8.
She asserted that it was the new mental approach that had helped her get over the Wimbledon final faster than she might have had she not taken the break.
“Losing like that in a Grand Slam final, (a few years ago) I think I would have blamed myself more, held onto guilt for a longer amount of time,” she said.
“I feel like I made a point to myself and to other people that if you really put a positive mindset out there, or try and work through things, you can have a positive outcome. I feel like I was able to do all the right things.”
In the last point of the match, Anisimova hit a backhand cross court only for the ball to hit the top of the net, but go over. Swiatek chased but had no chance of getting there on time. It was a fortuitous outcome to the rally.
But Anisimova has learnt to make her own luck.
