WTA Match of the Year, No. 1: Amanda Anisimova comes of age in Aryna Sabalenka Wimbledon stunner

This week, Steve Tignor will reveal his WTA Matches of the Year, and the TENNIS.com editors will reveal our WTA Players of the Year. Check out our ATP Matches of the Year and ATP Players of the Year.

Aryna Sabalenka was the best player of 2025. Amanda Anisimova was the best story of 2025. Together, to everyone’s surprise, they were also the rivalry of the year.

They played four times, all on major stages—at Roland Garros, Wimbledon, the US Open, and the WTA Finals. All four matches were hard-hitting and competitive, full of wallop and spirit. But two things made this edition stand above the others: That little extra tension that comes with a semifinal played on a sunny day on Centre Court; and the spectacle of seeing whether Anisimova, who had never been this far at Wimbledon before, could stand up to Sabalenka, and the moment.

We could guess that she wouldn’t be scared of Sabalenka, whatever her seeding. The American has always been comfortable with her power, and she’s one of the few players who can match her pace from the forehand or backhand side. Coming into this encounter, she was 5-3 against her.

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But this wasn’t just any other match. Sabalenka has made herself a regular in Slam semis during this decade, while Anisimova hadn’t reached one in six years. On that occasion, at Roland Garros in 2019, she led eventual champion Ashleigh Barty by a set and 3-0 before wilting. No matter how well she was striking the ball on this day, the American would still have to summon the strength, with her first trip to a Slam final on the line, to close out the top seed.

From the start, Anisimova looked—and sounded—determined not to be intimidated by Sabalenka’s trademark vocal ferocity. In the fifth game, she powered a backhand crosscourt for a winner, and accompanied it with a pressure-venting shriek. In the next game, she raised her grunt level higher than Sabalenka’s as she pounded another backhand past her. Anisimova won the first set, 6-4.

Still, it was one thing to fight her opponent, another thing entirely to fight the moment.

In the second set, Anisimova played well, but didn’t take her chances when she had them and lost it 6-4. In the third, when she fired two straight forehand winners to go up 4-1, she looked ready to fly across the finish line. But the killer blow still proved elusive. Serving at 5-3, she blew one match point and was broken. With Sabalenka serving at 4-5, Anisimova went up 0-40, triple match point, and then promptly lost the first two. Now it was 30-40. If the game went to deuce, or Sabalenka leveled at 5-5, how would Anisimova react? Her swings on all of her match points had been ominously nervy.

I was absolutely dying out there. Amanda Anisimova

“I was absolutely dying out there,” Anisimova admitted later.

So maybe it was a blessing that Sabalenka drilled a serve down the middle, which meant that Anisimova had no time to worry about what she should do with her return. She just stepped in and drilled it straight back. And maybe it was even more of a blessing that Sabalenka hit her first ground stroke deep and down the middle, again giving Anisimova little time to choose a response. She swung up and out on her forehand, with no sign of tightness, and the ball sailed crosscourt and toward the corner.

Sabalenka, who had moved forward, was caught off guard and had to scramble back to try to catch up with the ball. For a second, it looked as if it would fly long. Instead, it dropped a few inches inside the baseline, leaving Sabalenka to flail futilely in its wake. Just like that, her comeback was over, and Anisimova was a Grand Slam finalist.

“It was such a tough match and a little bit of a roller coaster there,” Anisimova said after her 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 victory. “I think we were both a bit shaky throughout the match. That showed.”

On the final point, Anisimova didn’t have to think, and that was probably a good thing. But this win was also the product of a lot of what she called her “work on myself.” For years, she had been prone to nerves and doubts about her desire to play. But that was before a six-month break from the tour and a new coaching partnership with Rick Vleeshouwers, Now Anisimova, at 23, had the strength to look on the bright side, even when the old nerves and doubts set in.

“‘You’re doing great, just stay calm,’” she told herself after she lost the second set. “The opposite of what a tennis player is usually telling themselves.”

“I could not believe it,” she said of her final winning forehand. “I was just so relieved.”

Anisimova would finish 2025 in the Top 5 for the first time. It was a surprise, but also not a surprise at all. She has always been one of the sport’s great ball-strikers, and this season, finally, she showed how far that could take her. On the last point of the best match of the year, she just did what came naturally.