Iga Swiatek rolls over Amanda Anisimova for her first Wimbledon title

Iga Swiatek rolls over Amanda Anisimova for her first Wimbledon title

WIMBLEDON, England — Through a noisy Wimbledon that began with a splashy TikTok dance, featured several clamorous upsets and will end with a booming rerun of the best rivalry in men’s tennis, Iga Swiatek moved silently through the draw.

She was able to slip through quietly because she was having a down year by her standards. Swiatek, who as recently as a year ago was regarded as the most dominant force in women’s tennis, had not won a title since the French Open in 2024. This year, she hadn’t so much as made the final of a tournament before last month. She arrived at Wimbledon firmly in the underdog category, her focus on developing as a player rather than winning the only Grand Slam at which she had never reached a semifinal.

Playing free of outside expectations, Swiatek found herself having fun — then found her old self. She electrified her quiet run Saturday, orchestrating a deafening crescendo in the Wimbledon final with a 6-0, 6-0 defeat of Amanda Anisimova.

It was the first shutout in the women’s final here since 1911.

“I feel like tennis keeps surprising me,” Swiatek said, “and I keep surprising myself.”

Swiatek lost just eight points on her first serve and never had a toe out of place against Anisimova, a 23-year-old American who arrived at her first Grand Slam final nervous and, she said, fatigued.

The win made Swiatek Wimbledon’s first Polish champion in the Open era and gave her a sixth Grand Slam trophy, alongside four from the French Open and one from the U.S. Open. She is just the eighth woman to hold a Grand Slam title from all three surfaces: clay, grass and hard court.

“Honestly, I didn’t even dream [this] because, for me, it was way too far,” the 24-year-old said on the court afterward. “I feel like I’m already an experienced player after [winning] the Slams before. But I never really expected this one.”

Her win Saturday at Wimbledon gave Iga Swiatek her first career title on grass. (Toby Melville/Reuters)

Swiatek’s Wimbledon troubles had everything to do with the surface. Her journey on grass has not been as smooth as it had been on clay, where she accumulated a 26-match unbeaten streak at the French Open, or on hard court, where winning the 2022 U.S. Open expanded her reputation from clay-court luminary to world-beating talent.

Her grass-court career started promisingly with a win in the 2018 junior tournament here. But a year later, playing as a pro, she lost in the first round. Her best result at Wimbledon before this year was the quarterfinals in 2023.

To Swiatek’s credit, her arrivals at the All England Club over the past three years came on the heels of a quick turnaround following a win at the French Open. She received a blessing in disguise this year in the form of a semifinal loss in Paris to Aryna Sabalenka that afforded her a precious two extra days to practice on grass. Swiatek decamped to Mallorca, Spain, where the grass is better than in her native Poland. Her mind was clear.

“I was just happy to go in a new place and just be open-minded about the stuff that I need to work on and also accept that it might not be the smoothest transition, as usual,” Swiatek said. “I just focus on the challenge and the next step, and that’s it.”

She and her team worked on her movement, focusing on the particularly tricky task of stopping to find her footing before striking the ball. On clay, players have more time to run to the ball and slide through their groundstrokes. On grass, players must stay light on their feet, accelerating on a dime to reach a speedy shot, then taking tiny little steps to get in the right position. Winning requires the type of trust in one’s game Swiatek didn’t always have on this surface.

“There’s no place to overthink here. You kind of have to follow your instincts,” Swiatek said. “If that is going well and you can rely on them … this is kind of fun in some way.”

It was hard to determine what drew more of a reaction during the tournament — Swiatek revealing to the British crowd that she preferred her strawberries and cream with cold pasta, which is a traditional Polish dish, or her admission that she was having fun on grass.

Swiatek reasserted her dominance Saturday, showing no mercy against Anisimova, the former teenage prodigy who stepped away from the sport in 2023 for an eight-month mental health break. Just making it to the final was validation of her decision to prioritize herself.

“I think that’s a really special message that I think I’ve been able to show,” Anisimova said ahead of Saturday’s match, “because when I took my break, a lot of people told me that you would never make it to the top again.”

Anisimova credited Swiatek with making the match difficult for her but was “frozen with nerves” playing on Centre Court in front of a large contingent of family and friends packed into her player box. She said she arrived so tired to the final after her two-week odyssey that she had to pause her warmup after every rally.

Swiatek, an old pro, had no such trouble. She improved to 100-20 in career Grand Slam matches and a stifling 6-0 in Grand Slam finals. Have a small trophy made for Karolina Muchova, Swiatek’s opponent in the 2023 French Open: She is the only woman to take a set off Swiatek in a major championship final.

“Today I just wanted to enjoy the time that I had on the Centre Court and enjoy the last hours of me playing well on grass,” Swiatek said, smiling. “Because who knows if it’s going to happen again.”

In six Grand Slam finals, Iga Swiatek has dropped just one set. (Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)