The key battle in this Wimbledon final as Amanda Anisimova's comeback story threatens Iga Swiatek's shot at history

Independent

a day ago

It's safe to say nobody predicted this line-up for the 2025 Wimbledon final: Iga Swiatek is the queen of clay, a four-time champion of Roland Garros who had never got to grips with grass, until now; Amanda Anisimova is the American prodigy who took a break from the sport aged only 21 to protect her mental health. She rediscovered her game and two years later finds herself in her first grand-slam final. For the eighth year in a row, there will be a new women's champion.
They even surprised themselves. 'I'm not going to say I wouldn't believe because I kind of believe and I know in tennis a lot can happen," Swiatek said. "But I guess I would have thought I would need to do a lot to be in this place and learn a lot."
After beating the No 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals, Anisimova said: 'To be honest, if you told me I'd be in the final at Wimbledon, I would not believe you. At least not this soon.'
Anisimova carried huge expectation as a teenage star in the US, and at the same time had to cope with the death of her father, who coached her, while she was only 17. The American cited burnout as the reason behind her eight-month hiatus between May 2023 and January 2024, saying the pressure of relentless tournaments had become 'unbearable'.
She barely touched a tennis racquet, instead taking time to study at university and taking up painting as a hobby. Her world ranking plummeted from No 23 to No 359, but the dose of mental refreshment worked wonders: she returned with a newfound love for the game that had consumed her life up to now. Success arrived in February with a first WTA title in Qatar, before these two sensational weeks on grass.
'When I stopped, people told me, 'You'll never get back to the top if you step away from tennis',' Anisimova said this week. 'Just being able to prove that you can get back to the top if you prioritise yourself, that's been incredibly special.'
Swiatek took a brief break of her own for very different reasons last year when she accepted a one-month ban after testing positive for trimetazidine (TMZ) during an out-of-competition urine sample. She was deemed to have been at 'no significant fault' after proving that a batch of sleeping tablets she had been taking were contaminated.
The 24-year-old described the ordeal as a 'nightmare', while her unimpeachable reputation was questioned. She may have proved her innocence but the words 'positive doping test' will now forever be written into her Wikipedia entry.
Swiatek's No 1 ranking slipped away as she fought to clear her name and she dropped to No 8 in the world, her lowest for three years. Her game slumped and few tipped her to make a deep run on Wimbledon's grass, where the five-time grand-slam champion had never before progressed beyond the quarter-finals.
But mysterious things happen at Wimbledon, a place where the rapid switch from clay to grass can quickly rewrite the narrative. Coco Gauff won the French Open in sensational style, then crashed out here in the first round, and the big seeds have kept falling.
Swiatek has quietly moved through the draw, while perhaps enjoying the benefits of the hot British summer which has slowed down the grass, taking away its traditionally slick characteristics and offering up a higher, slower ball for a player like Swiatek to hit with ferocious forehand topspin. Not only has the Pole served and returned brilliantly over the two weeks, but her forehand quality has rated highest in the entire women's draw, according to the data bods who work these things out, with spin and speed and precision and built into a deadly weapon.
And this will likely be the tale of this Wimbledon final: Swiatek's precision forehand against Anismiova's booming backhand. The American stands tall and snaps through the ball, driving flat groundstrokes low over the net which her opponents have routinely struggled to tame, not least Sabalenka in their semi-final. Which shot will dominate on Centre Court?
Perhaps Swiatek's arrival here shouldn't be such a shock. After all, she had reached the semi-finals in Melbourne and Paris already this year, and her run through Wimbledon means she has now won more grand-slam matches at this point of the year than at any season in her career. She also made the final of her grass-court warm-up tournament in Bad Homburg, losing to Jessica Pegula, one of Wimbledon's early seeded victims.
Now Swaitek stands on the brink of history. Only 10 women in the Open era have won six grand slams, and only sevevn have done it with both the French Open and Wimbledon in the collection, the ultimate test of a player's all-round mastery of the game. She has four French titles and one in New York, and it seems only a matter of time before she wins in Melbourne having twice been to the Australian Open semi-finals. But her Wimbledon record suggests this opportunity may not come around again – for Swiatek, Saturday's match may be the key to unlocking the career grand slam.
But Anisimova has been on a rare journey to get here, one full of courage in the face of tennis's relentless demands. She has her own ending to write.