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THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB, London — The talk of the past two Grand Slam tournaments has been about the gaping opportunity in the men’s draw with Carlos Alcaraz’s absence due to a wrist injury. With only Jannik Sinner to contend with, the field has been a-flutter: Will Novak Djokovic take the chance to win his 25th Grand Slam title? Or will a new Grand Slam champion rise from the rubble?
At Wimbledon, there is opportunity in the women’s draw, too.
With the four women who’ve been dominating tennis for the past few years all looking shaky, the women’s draw at Wimbledon looked open before the tournament started. After No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina and No. 3 seed Iga Świątek, the defending champion, lost in quick succession Saturday, that open draw suddenly looked like a cavern.
That might explain the shrieks of anguish emanating from Centre Court during Madison Keys’ dramatic third-round win over Amanda Anisimova, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3. She won the all-American battle to advance to the fourth round for the first time since 2023.
Anisimova’s matches frequently contain shrieks of anguish. It’s rarer to hear that from Keys. And after a scratchy, difficult start at the tournament where she advanced to the final last year, it was Anisimova, 24, who came out on the wrong side of an all-power, no-quarter clash.
Ahead of the match, both could count themselves as two of the most potent grass-court players left in the tournament.
Both women are proven threats in a Grand Slam field, with Keys having broken through to win the Australian Open in 2025 and Anisimova having made the U.S. Open final last year, as well as Wimbledon’s.
And both were aware of the opportunity at hand, with the remaining frontrunners left in the draw — Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka — not looking much like frontrunners before Wimbledon began. In a battle between two point-and-shoot power players, Keys looked a hair more polished, placed the ball just a touch better and played the big points with more accuracy.
Anisimova had perhaps an added layer to contend with: The last time she set foot on Centre Court is not exactly a happy memory. Iga Świątek handed her a 6-0, 6-0 drubbing in last year’s Wimbledon final that could’ve festered into a psychic wound. Anisimova cried her way through her post-match speech then, wiping her tears and taking deep breaths in front of a crowd of nearly 15,000, but she didn’t let those feelings linger. She said after the match she was in shock, but certain she’d emerge stronger.
What she carried with her from Wimbledon was not one Saturday morning but the two weeks it took for her to arrive at the final, and that her family got to be there to watch.
By the time the U.S. Open rolled around, she was dismissing the whole ordeal with a hand wave and a smile.
“It was just, like, on the court that I was really crying that much,” she said during a news conference in New York in September. “Maybe, like, 30 minutes afterwards, but then I got on the phone with someone, and I kind of just laughed it off. I was, like, yeah. This is insane.”
Anisimova put a cap on the thing with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Świątek in New York and kept it moving all the way into the final, where she lost to Sabalenka. She racked up a quarterfinal appearance at the Australian Open to start 2026.
Her year hasn’t been challenge-free since then. After losing in the fourth round of the Miami Open, Anisimova broke up with her coach and took off two months of the clay-court season to rehab a left wrist injury.
Burnout crept up, too, and after losing early at Queen’s, the only grass-court tournament she played before Wimbledon, she made the snap decision to fly home, only to return to London five days later.
The last-minute airfare made her feel a bit guilty, she said earlier this week. But Anisimova is a woman who has learned to trust when her gut tells her she needs a break from the tour, even if just for a few days. She returned to Wimbledon feeling refreshed and confident.
She cruised through a first set with minimal errors against Keys, who in contrast looked tired at the start. She’d arrived in Wimbledon having won the title in Eastbourne after she made a run to the quarterfinals in Berlin, and seemed content to try to counterpunch when Anisimova claimed the role of the aggressor early on.
But they flipped in the second set, when Keys leaned into her serve to rack up a few free points and kept her groundstrokes low enough to frustrate Anisimova. Serving for a 5-2 lead, Keys plopped a second serve into the corner of the box and Anisimova whacked her return into the net before immediately crouching to the grass and resting her head in her hand.
Keys, 31, had her own moments of frustration as the two traded errors before she finally took the set. One break in the third was all she needed to maintain momentum, as Anisimova’s groundstrokes misfired as they had done against Sofia Kenin in the previous round. That time, Anisimova’s serve bailed her out. Against Keys, who stayed far steadier than Kenin, she had no such luck. And Keys had more riding on this match than the opportunity unfolding in front of her in the bracket.
“I didn’t want my first time to end that way,” she said in her on-court interview. She had never played on Centre Court before. After this win, she surely will again.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
2026 The Athletic Media Company
Continue reading...
At Wimbledon, there is opportunity in the women’s draw, too.
With the four women who’ve been dominating tennis for the past few years all looking shaky, the women’s draw at Wimbledon looked open before the tournament started. After No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina and No. 3 seed Iga Świątek, the defending champion, lost in quick succession Saturday, that open draw suddenly looked like a cavern.
That might explain the shrieks of anguish emanating from Centre Court during Madison Keys’ dramatic third-round win over Amanda Anisimova, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3. She won the all-American battle to advance to the fourth round for the first time since 2023.
Anisimova’s matches frequently contain shrieks of anguish. It’s rarer to hear that from Keys. And after a scratchy, difficult start at the tournament where she advanced to the final last year, it was Anisimova, 24, who came out on the wrong side of an all-power, no-quarter clash.
Ahead of the match, both could count themselves as two of the most potent grass-court players left in the tournament.
Both women are proven threats in a Grand Slam field, with Keys having broken through to win the Australian Open in 2025 and Anisimova having made the U.S. Open final last year, as well as Wimbledon’s.
And both were aware of the opportunity at hand, with the remaining frontrunners left in the draw — Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka — not looking much like frontrunners before Wimbledon began. In a battle between two point-and-shoot power players, Keys looked a hair more polished, placed the ball just a touch better and played the big points with more accuracy.
Anisimova had perhaps an added layer to contend with: The last time she set foot on Centre Court is not exactly a happy memory. Iga Świątek handed her a 6-0, 6-0 drubbing in last year’s Wimbledon final that could’ve festered into a psychic wound. Anisimova cried her way through her post-match speech then, wiping her tears and taking deep breaths in front of a crowd of nearly 15,000, but she didn’t let those feelings linger. She said after the match she was in shock, but certain she’d emerge stronger.
What she carried with her from Wimbledon was not one Saturday morning but the two weeks it took for her to arrive at the final, and that her family got to be there to watch.
By the time the U.S. Open rolled around, she was dismissing the whole ordeal with a hand wave and a smile.
“It was just, like, on the court that I was really crying that much,” she said during a news conference in New York in September. “Maybe, like, 30 minutes afterwards, but then I got on the phone with someone, and I kind of just laughed it off. I was, like, yeah. This is insane.”
Anisimova put a cap on the thing with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Świątek in New York and kept it moving all the way into the final, where she lost to Sabalenka. She racked up a quarterfinal appearance at the Australian Open to start 2026.
Her year hasn’t been challenge-free since then. After losing in the fourth round of the Miami Open, Anisimova broke up with her coach and took off two months of the clay-court season to rehab a left wrist injury.
Burnout crept up, too, and after losing early at Queen’s, the only grass-court tournament she played before Wimbledon, she made the snap decision to fly home, only to return to London five days later.
The last-minute airfare made her feel a bit guilty, she said earlier this week. But Anisimova is a woman who has learned to trust when her gut tells her she needs a break from the tour, even if just for a few days. She returned to Wimbledon feeling refreshed and confident.
She cruised through a first set with minimal errors against Keys, who in contrast looked tired at the start. She’d arrived in Wimbledon having won the title in Eastbourne after she made a run to the quarterfinals in Berlin, and seemed content to try to counterpunch when Anisimova claimed the role of the aggressor early on.
But they flipped in the second set, when Keys leaned into her serve to rack up a few free points and kept her groundstrokes low enough to frustrate Anisimova. Serving for a 5-2 lead, Keys plopped a second serve into the corner of the box and Anisimova whacked her return into the net before immediately crouching to the grass and resting her head in her hand.
Keys, 31, had her own moments of frustration as the two traded errors before she finally took the set. One break in the third was all she needed to maintain momentum, as Anisimova’s groundstrokes misfired as they had done against Sofia Kenin in the previous round. That time, Anisimova’s serve bailed her out. Against Keys, who stayed far steadier than Kenin, she had no such luck. And Keys had more riding on this match than the opportunity unfolding in front of her in the bracket.
“I didn’t want my first time to end that way,” she said in her on-court interview. She had never played on Centre Court before. After this win, she surely will again.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
2026 The Athletic Media Company
Continue reading...
