Despite loss in U.S. Open women's final, Amanda Anisimova continues to show promise
Aryna Sabalenka hugs Amanda Anisimova after defeating Anisimova in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6, in the women's final of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships in Flushing Meadows. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Keep fighting! Keep fighting!
Amanda Anisimova’s team could be heard yelling this all the way through the second set of the U.S. Open women’s championship match on Saturday. Fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium also were firmly behind her, cheering as she won three straight games to force a tiebreak.
Yet it was not to be. Despite showing a Jersey girl-like grit and determination through her run to the final of this U.S. Open, Anisimova was stopped short of winning her first Grand Slam title, losing to defending champion Aryna Sabalenka, 6-3, 7-6 (3).
Sabalenka’s win marked the first time a woman has repeated as champion in New York since Serena Williams won three straight titles from 2012-14. It also marked as incomplete what had been a storybook comeback for the 24-year-old Anisimova after she suffered a brutal defeat in the Wimbledon final 56 days earlier.
“It’s been a great summer. Losing in two finals in a row is great but also super-hard,” Anisimova said Saturday in her on-court interview during the awards ceremony. “I didn’t fight hard enough for my dreams today.”
Maybe not hard enough to win it all, but it’s hard not to admire the fight Anisimova put up to get back to her second straight Grand Slam final.
Anisimova, who was born in Freehold, New Jersey, and moved to Florida when she was 3, endured one of the most humiliating defeats in the history of the women’s game when she was beaten by Iga Swiatek, 6-0, 6-0, in the Wimbledon final this year.
Her appearance in that Grand Slam final, her first, had been heralded as a long-anticipated breakthrough for Anisimova. After losing to Swiatek in 57 minutes, a teary Anisimova won the hearts of tennis fans with a speech that complimented Swiatek, apologized to fans, thanked her mother and told fans that she hoped to be standing back there again someday.
She then set out to get back to the final of her next Grand Slam. First — in what she called the biggest win of her life — she avenged her loss to Swiatek with a straight-sets victory in the quarterfinals. She then outlasted two-time champion Naomi Osaka in a marathon three-set semifinal that went into the wee hours of the morning.
Anisimova had reason to believe she could win it all Saturday as she entered the match with a 6-3 head-to-head record against the top player in the world, including a win in the semifinals at Wimbledon.
In the past, Sabalenka has let her emotions get the best of her. On Saturday, she played a steady and controlled match to earn her fourth overall major tournament title. When Anisimova fought back from 3-5 down to force a second-set tiebreaker, Sabalenka knew where she was headed. She has a 21-1 record in tiebreakers this season and has won 19 in a row.
In the end, it was Sabalenka’s experience — this was her seventh appearance in a Grand Slam — that made all the difference, especially early in the match. In the first set, Sabalenka had four unforced errors to Anisimova’s 15.
“I just felt like throughout the match, I wasn’t playing my best tennis,” Anisimova said in her postgame news conference. “ I feel like with finals I have a lot of nerves, and it’s something I’m trying to work on, but I just wish I played more aggressive. Of course, she was playing amazing. She was playing very aggressive and doing all the right things, so she made it very difficult for me today.”
Anisimova had never played a match at Arthur Ashe Stadium when the roof was closed, as it was Saturday because of rain. She said she had trouble seeing the ball when she served against the bright white roof of the stadium. Both players failed to hold serve multiple times; Anisimova won four of the seven break points and Sabalenka won five of six.
“In the first set when she broke me back, and then at the end of the second set when she broke me back, there was, like, two moments where I was really close to lose control, but at that moment I told myself, ‘No, it’s not going to happen,’ ” Sabalenka said.
In a few weeks, Anisimova might be able to step back and appreciate what she did this year. With the finals appearance, her ranking will jump to a career-high No. 4. She finished last season ranked 35 and at the end of 2023 was ranked 359th after taking a mental health hiatus.
Said Anisimova: “It’s really hard to look at the fall and think about that right now, because I mean, today was a pretty hard loss to take . . . Yeah, I mean, I didn’t win today, so of course I didn’t do enough. That’s just the reality and I have to accept that.”
Accept it and use it as motivation, as she did at Wimbledon.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
