Amanda Anisimova climbs back again, this time at the WTA Tour Finals against Iga Świątek

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — At some point in Amanda Anisimova’s tennis career, she is going to fall into a hole out of which it feels impossible to climb.

It happens to every player, often many times over and sometimes over and over again in a single season. When it happens to Anisimova, she is going to have 2025 to look back on, the season in which she rose and fell and kept climbing back up.

She did it once more Wednesday night, with a trip to the knockout round of the WTA Tour Finals on the line on her first appearance at the tournament. The 24-year-old American climbed back once more, this time from one set and two break points down against Iga Świątek, the world No. 2 and six-time Grand Slam champion who has become a very familiar foe the past five months, and will likely remain one for the rest of their tennis lives.

“I was honestly enjoying it,” Anisimova said on the court, after she had sealed her 6-7(3) 6-4, 6-2 win over the former world No. 1.

And why wouldn’t she have?

Finally, after four and a half days of competition, the season-ending tournament for the top eight women’s players in the world delivered a match with serious consequences. Given the contours of that season, it was fitting that it pitted Anisimova against Świątek. Their two previous duels were two of the more consequential and memorable battles of the year: The Wimbledon final that no one will soon forget, not least the two women who contested it, and a U.S. Open quarterfinal with enough redemptive value that one of them might remember it forever.

The first, Świątek’s 6-0, 6-0 Centre Court beatdown of Anisimova, who was playing her first Grand Slam final against the most relentless frontrunner the sport has seen in some years, was followed by Anisimova’s emotional on-court tribute to her mother that won her countless fans. Then came Anisimova’s stunning bounce back, a 6-3, 6-4 triumph with more adversity than the scoreline makes out on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

On Wednesday, after both players split their first two round-robin matches, their final duel of the year became a winner-moves-on, loser-goes-out shootout. From the start, the tension was evident. Świątek shook her arms and glared at the court when she missed. Anisimova twitched her neck and kept talking to herself after her own errors. After just five games, she had a towel of ice around her neck and a bag of it on her forehead.

Both players came to Riyadh looking to finish the season with the sort of wins that can carry them through an off-season, and they played a match that turned on just a few points.

It took 23 games for a break of serve. In the first set, Świątek grabbed the early edge in the tiebreak with a big forehand return down the line. From there, Anisimova struggled to manage the pressure of having to come back from the mini-break, succumbing to the errors off the ground she’d mostly avoided, including a long forehand on set point.

The second set had an early hinge moment when Świątek earned three break points at 1-1, two of which came one after the other and one of which she squandered with the kind of second-serve return miss that haunted her return games all night. Later, with Świątek serving to stay in the set at 4-5, Anisimova pounded two second-serve returns of her own that didn’t come back over.

From there, Anisimova took over, breaking twice in the third set, once early and once to end the match. On the final point, Anisimova read a serve down the T and curved an inside-in forehand not all that close to the sideline. Świątek watched it sail past her and slumped her shoulders, as Anisimova’s arms rose into the air.

For Świątek, the loss ended an individual season yet again filled with over 60 wins, a Grand Slam title and a lot of evolution in her game. The 24-year-old and her coach, Wim Fissette, are reacquainting her with the counterpunching majesty and miraculous footwork that made her name.

In becoming the most dominant player on the tour between 2022 and 2024, she lost a lot of that feel to the style Tomasz Wiktorowski ingrained in her, to meet power with power. The losses that have resulted from those two styles fighting each other mid-match have left her wondering why, even as she competes as hard as ever, she can’t dominate as she once did.

“When you do everything and it’s still not enough, I guess it means that you just need to get your tennis better,” she told reporters.

Anisimova is playing the best tennis of her life, and winning in a way that can make a player feel like she can come back from any deficit or setback or injury that confronts her.

Her biggest comebacks to date have been returning to tennis after the loss of her father when she was 17, and then after an extended break from the sport in 2023. Then there were the injuries in 2024, and this year’s first WTA 1000 title, in Doha, Qatar, that left Anisimova banged up for much of the spring.

Then there was the loss in London. Its magnitude, its encapsulation of every tennis player’s worst nightmares, almost made it easier to move past, she said. How much worse could an experience on a tennis court be than getting double-bageled in the Wimbledon final?

Anisimova made sure the outcome at the U.S. Open was far different. She watched a rerun of that crushing defeat before she faced Świątek in New York. She came back from a set down in the semifinal against Naomi Osaka. Then, after losing the final to Aryna Sabalenka, Anisimova won the China Open in Beijing, for her second WTA 1000 title of the season and of her career.

In Riyadh, she rebounded from an opening-match drilling from Elena Rybakina, the most in-form player in the field, to beat Madison Keys after being a set and break down.

Late Wednesday night, in a corridor beneath King Saud University Stadium, Anisimova had a couple of explanations for the repeated bounce-backs, and for her run of three-set wins, which now stands at 13.

As a junior, she used to go down early often. She had a lot of practice not giving up. She likes learning something from a loss, solving her problems, and being better the next time she walks onto a court. Playing from behind on the scoreboard or in a matchup can look daunting, but it frees up expectation too. There is something to lose, but less than when the scoreboard is 0-0.

“When I’m down, I’m a bit calmer,” she said. “I always enjoy a challenge. I’m willing to embrace it.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women’s Tennis

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