It could not have been much more than 30 metres’ distance between them, but they felt worlds apart.
While Iga Swiatek was clambering up the rows of seats towards her box to celebrate her maiden Wimbledon title, Amanda Anisimova sat slumped in her chair, a towel over her face, desperate for the pristine green of Centre Court to just swallow her up after suffering the scarring ignominy of losing a Grand Slam final 6-0 6-0.
Right from the off, when she went 0-40 down and was broken on serve in the very first service game, the atmosphere was decidedly eery. When would she overcome her stage fright and land a blow on Swiatek? The answer never came. This will always be remembered as the Wimbledon final over in 57 minutes.
The galling nature of Anisimova’s defeat felt it might threaten how we come to remember Swiatek’s crowning moment. But the American battled through the tears in her on-court loser’s speech to praise the champion, to force a smile, even to crack a couple of jokes. Swiatek, she rightly said, was a deserving champion. The 2018 junior Wimbledon champion has levelled up. She was powerful, precise, marvellous throughout.
The ruthless manner of her victory may have left some on Centre Court feeling cheated of their pricey tickets but was just a measure of her exceptional level all fortnight. She can thank her opponent for having knocked out the world No1 Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-final, but there were no more gimmes beyond. She had dropped just one set all tournament, winning her semi-final 6-2 6-0 before becoming only the second player ever to win a women’s Grand Slam final with a double bagel, after Steffi Graf at the 1988 French Open.
This was a first Wimbledon final for both, and Swiatek is still yet to lose a Grand Slam final, claiming her sixth. Anisimova, a Roland-Garros semi-finalist at just 17 years old in 2019, was powerless to quell her own nerves in her first Grand Slam final. She froze, eternally hamstrung, unable to respond to the crowd’s regular best efforts to boost her into action.
The action was almost entirely Swiatek’s. Forehand winners slapped into the corner, 119mph aces, drop shots Anisimova could only stare at. Her opponent all too often fired beyond the baseline when she was not hitting double faults or merely reacting with resignation to Swiatek’s brilliance. Anisimova won just 26 per cent of points off her first serve and put only 45 per cent of her first serves in — no recipe for success in any match, let alone the final of Wimbledon.
How long had it been since Swiatek, the first-ever Polish Wimbledon singles champion, first dreamed of lifting the Venus Rosewater Dish on Centre Court?
“Honestly, I didn’t even dream,” she laughed afterwards. “For me, it was way too far. I want to thank my team, because I feel they believed in me more than I did.” A fortnight of peerless tennis on a surface previously seen as her weakness has delivered the 24-year-old the greatest moment of her career so far.
Anisimova, 23 and born only three months after Swiatek, first faced the Pole nine years ago in a Junior Fed Cup match in Hungary that Swiatek won 6-4 6-2. Their next meeting and first at professional level proved nothing short of a nightmare for her.
The 13th seed was not only shackled by the grand occasion and by the relentless Swiatek but also mired by her own negative body language. The American glared at the turf, smacked her racquet against her thigh, or threw her head to the heavens as the games kept passing her by. Plenty found it hard to watch.
Having lost the first set without claiming a single game and when 0-30 down on serve in the first game of the second, she was bouncing a ball down with her racquet when it landed on her shoe and rolled away. Here, in microcosm, was her whole helpless experience, the final and the day all just getting further and further away from her.
Just as for her conqueror, though, this has been an excellent fortnight. Mustering the words when surely none felt like coming, she acknowledged her mother for flying in to watch her, and then thanked the crowd. “Even though I ran out of gas today, you guys have still lifted me up.
“I know I didn’t have enough today, but I always believe in myself and hope to be back here someday.” There’s a very decent chance she will. Next week, she will break into the world’s top-10 for the very first time.
Swiatek has been there for some time, though this has been an admittedly testing year for the former world No1, missing a month and three tournaments in late 2024 after testing positive for the banned substance trimetazidine and having to work her way back to the summit.
In May, she was left devastated by failing to win a fourth successive French Open title. But, in the long-run, a blessing in disguise? She regrouped immediately, switching with laser focus to the grass-court season. She has swatted aside everyone in her path — Anisimova, however cruel this was, just the latest.
Swiatek is, without doubt, the greatest player of her generation, this her sixth Grand Slam title and with so many more still to be claimed. In her first Wimbledon final, she was particularly brutal. A demolition job in less than an hour. In no time, a win for all time.
