LONDON. — When Amanda Anisimova reached the Wimbledon quarterfinals as a 20-year-old in the summer of 2022, she was being hailed as the “next big thing” in American tennis along with Coco Gauff.
But instead of providing a launch pad for her career, that achievement led to a downward spiral.
From mid-August that year to the following May, Anisimova failed to win back-to-back matches in any of the 10 tournaments she entered, winning a paltry four matches in total during that miserable nine-month run.
With her time on the tour taking a toll on her mental health, in May 2023 she pulled the plug on her tennis year to try and get away from it all, after realizing that she was simply burned out from the never-ending cycle of defeats.
When she made her comeback to the Grand Slam stage at the Australian Open last year, her ranking had plummeted to 442 but, now rejuvenated and ready to go again, that statistic did not faze her.
She made it to the last 16 before running into eventual champion Aryna Sabalenka, and rather than getting down in the dumps, Anisimova took it as proof that her career was back on an upward trajectory as it was the first time since Wimbledon 2022 that she had won three successive matches.
Even when she failed to qualify for Wimbledon last year, while ranked 189th, she knew that mentally she was in a better place than she had been 12 months earlier.
Fast forward 12 months and things are looking bright and sunny again for Anisimova—albeit at a soggy Wimbledon.
Seeded 13th, she is back in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon following a nerve-shredding 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 victory over Czech 30th seed Linda Noskova—a result that will allow her to break into the world’s top 10 for the first time.
“I was just super excited to compete here. . . and just being seeded was already really special,” said the 23-year-old, who opened her Wimbledon account by handing YuliaPutintseva the dreaded 6-0, 6-0 double bagel in the first round.
