https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/12/sport/amanda-anisimova-wimbledon-final-defeat-spt
This past Saturday, Iga Swiatek and Amanda Anisimova (pictured above) played for the Wimbledon's women's singles title. It was quite one-sided, with Poland's Swiatek defeating the America Anisimova in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0.
Perhaps more impressive to me than Swiatek's nearly perfect performance was Anisimova's grace under pressure in the post-match interview. When I watched it, her inclination to graciously thank everyone she could think of (including Swiatek) really impressed me - more than impressed me. For a 23-year-old person in such a pressure-cooker situation to behave so maturely and with such gratitude makes me think she is a remarkable person. I've become an Amanda Anisimova fan. The video of her remarks is here. If it is helpful, you can turn on closed captioning by hovering your mouse on the video; a CC button appears in the lower-right corner.
I wrote up more background for the match; it's below the break, in case those details interest you. But the video is what I really want to call your attention to; feel free to skip the rest of the post if you wish.
The Wimbledon tennis tournament's 2025 edition concluded this past weekend. Wimbledon is a "grand slam" event, meaning it is considered one of the four major professional tennis championships on both the men's and women's tours.
Most players on the tours (approximately 200 men and 200 women at any given time) never come close to making it into the final 16 of a grand slam tournament. To actually win a major championship is a career pinnacle that very few achieve. As in many other walks of life, the very few elite-of-the-elites tend to win multiple major championships, while the rest work hard and dream. On the men's tour, three men have split all 11 of the major championships played since the beginning of the 2023 season: Carlos Alcaraz of Spain has won four; Jannik Sinner of Italy, who won this year's Wimbledon men's single championship, also has won four; and Novak Djokovic, surely the greatest men's player of all time but now perhaps past his peak, has won three in that time period but none since 2023. Either Sinner or Alcaraz has won all of the last seven.
The women's draw has been a bit more democratic, but still there are only three women who have won multiple major titles since 2023: Iga Swiatek of Poland has won three, including this past Saturday's Wimbledon championship; Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus also has won three; and the American Coco Gauff has won two.
The women's singles championship match took place onSaturday. Swiatek played an American, Amanda Anisimova. The two women are contemporaries (born within three months of one another), and both were ranked in the top 5 in the world among teens on the junior tour, but their careers have taken different trajectories since ascending to the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tour. Swiatek is considered a future hall of famer already, with six major titles at age 24. Anisimova's career has been considerably more uneven. She has won a handful of WTA titles (none of them major tournaments), and in this year's Wimbledon tournament she was ranked 13th, which is quite respectable. But last year, her ranking was not high enough (189th in the world) for her to be invited to the tournament; she tried to get in by playing in a qualifying pre-tournament but didn't make the cut. In 2023, she ended her season early, citing burnout and a desire to tend to her mental health. This past Saturday was the first time Anisimova played in the finals match of a Grand Slam tournament.
Unfortunately for Anisimova, the result was lop-sided: Swiatek won, 6-0, 6-0. If you're not familiar with tennis scoring, that means that Swiatek won the two sets without Anisimova winning even a single game. That hadn't happened in a Wimbledon women's final match in over 100 years. The match took place at Wimbledon's Centre Court before 15,000 fans plus millions more watching on live television. As the match progressed, Anisimova did her best to keep her composure, but the frustration was hard to bottle up.
After most matches in these major tournaments, the tradition is: the contestants meet at the net and shake hands; both contestant's shake the hand of the head umpire sitting in the high seat; and then the loser packs up the racket, water bottle and other items as quickly as s/he can and exits the arena. If the match is considered a high profile (and televised) one, the winner stays on court and is interviewed live before the crowd and the cameras.
But for the Wimbledon finals, the tradition is different: both players are interviewed live, just a few moments after the match has concluded.
And this is what I want to call attention to: during her interview, Anisimova's poise was surreal. I don't mean she was an ice queen; all the emotions attendant upon having missed her chance to win a major tournament - an opportunity which she may never earn again - clearly were still coursing through her veins. But in this moment, she dug deep, and what she came up with was ... gratitude.
I'd invite you to watch the 5 minutes or so of her post-match reaction. The video is here. It's traditional in professional tennis for the loser of the match to show good sportsmanship toward the winner (and vice-versa). But in my judgment, Anisimova went considerably beyond that. She thanked everyone. She became progressively more thankful as she thought more and more about it. When I watched it on Saturday, I was moved, so I want to share it with you.
Perhaps I should add: I think there is something holy about genuine gratitude. I don't know if Anisimova belongs to any sort of faith tradition, but I caught a whiff of holiness in her moment.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Google AI nothing is known about her religion. Her parents emigrated from Russia to help their daughters’ tennis careers, so perhaps the heritage is Orthodox. Or perhaps the parents grew up in secular Russia before Putin realized he could use the Orthodox Church to further his ambitions just as Trump has used “ Christians “ to advance his political career. Maybe that’s where trump got the idea - from Putin.
DeleteI watched the video; she was impressive. She didn't hide her feelings, it was disappointing to lose. But the fact that she made it to Wimbledon means that she was in the top percent who did better than everyone who didn't make it that far. Kind of like the team that loses the Superbowl.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was touching that she was grateful to everyone who was there supporting her, especially her mom, who had been there for her all the way
Jim, I think you are right that there was holiness in that moment. I am reminded of the four ends of prayer; adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication. We tend to lean heavily into supplication, sometimes to the neglect of thanksgiving. The Greek word for thanksgiving is the root of the word Eucharist.
ReplyDeleteNot a big sports fan but I will weigh in on the Polish name, given the difficulty with Polish letters and pronunciation. Świątek sounds something like shfee-oon-tek. It means holiday.
ReplyDeleteStanley, yes, that is close to how the television announcers pronounce her name, too.
DeleteIn women's golf (LPGA), one of the top-ranked golfers at the moment is Atthaya Thitikul from Thailand. The announcers pronounce her name like, "Titikun"
Glad they make an effort, Jim. Polish spelling means nobody can sound out the name without a little study. Even though it has no diacritics, my last name comes out Kopazz or Kopacks instead of Kawpotch. I answer to all three. I was baptized in a Polish ethnic parish so my real first name on my baptismal certificate is Stanisław pronounced stahn- eece-waf. If the family stayed in that parish, I probably wouldn’t need Polish lessons today. They moved to a regular parish, nearly half Italian, half Irish, in my class of 50 except for two outliers, me and the guy with the name that ended in “eau”.
DeleteAmericans love a humble jock. Win one for the Gipper, luckiest man in the world.
ReplyDeleteOne time the dean got some basketball player turned motivational speaker who came to kick off our start of year symposium one time. He had been an MSU college star, then picked up by the LA Lakers, where he learned he wasn't nearly as good as he thought he was, but learned gratitude from Magic Johnson and humility from Jesus with some physical fitness advice thrown in.
Fun to listen to because the guy was very handsome, seemed sincere, and told a familiar story with humor.
Unfortunately, the effect was somewhat marred by my friends Jim and Larry the history profs, who had wagers going on whether he'd thank his parents, talk about his high school coach, tell about overcoming an injury, include how marriage and/or kids changed him, etc etc. All of which they were ticking off on their list as the guy was talking.
I’m not a big sports fan. If God really has anything to do with arranging the details of our lives ( I don’t believe that God does this, but…) God showed a sense of humor by immersing me in a family of four jocks and diehard sports fans. They should also score the talking points of the politicians. I gave up on watching political conventions, debates, campaign speeches etc back in the 90s - totally predictable on both sides. I just started reading policy information instead and looked at voting records. Sometimes I looked at donations to politicians to see who was buying them. The corporate world usually hedge their bets by making big campaign donations to both candidates in a race. Now there is no difficulty learning who is buying the politicians, including the individual billionaires. Corruption no longer matters and I don’t think there is a single politician out there even at the local level who cares more about principle than they care about their own career. The more honest politicians have quit the fray, especially in the GOP.
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Delete"motivational speaker"
DeleteYeah, I worked for a company for 20 years that brought in someone different to talk to us every year. Including athletes (if they weren't too expensive). All I can say it, it doesn't work for me.
I think, the more you learn about elite professional athletes and what a different world they inhabit from us hoi polloi, the more you can appreciate this 23-year-old woman being so grounded and having such perspective. Besides all the pay, privileges, perks and pampering that come with their status, they have had the expectations reinforced since middle school that they are to be worshiped and that the rules don't apply to them.
In addition, to reach the competitive level of Anisimova and Swiatek, a professional athlete pretty much has to have a ferocious and ruthless streak of competitiveness that would strike most of us as borderline unhealthy if not dangerous.
There are plenty of professional athletes in their early 20s would react to a loss like Anisimova's by slamming their locker door, throwing their racket across the room, kicking over the Gator Aid cooler and screaming expletives at anyone who comes within 20 feet of them. It's one of the reasons that the losers usually are hustled off the court / field / ice as soon as the match ends.
There is a tradition of sportsmanship in tennis, and maybe what Anisimova exhibited was just meaningless conventional blah. I thought I discerned something more than that in her moment of towering tsunami.
Tennis (as well as other individual sports like figure skating, golf, gymnastics) has a lot of weird people and episodes--bratty boys Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe, Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King battle of the sexes match, Maria Sharpova and her obnoxious noises, the Serena spandex suit controversy.
DeleteThe fact that you discern a special sincerity and humility in Ms Swiatek may speak more to your own decency than anything else.
I don’t follow any sports at all. I guess I’m an asportseist. But I hope they don’t do all that phony patriotism stuff in tennis like they do in football and baseball. I guess because tennis has no team dimension, it is not as applicable to cultivating a collective spirit.
DeleteI went to dozens and dozens of soccer and basketball games for years when our sons were playing. They played on rec teams, and school teams and sometimes we had to get them to 5 games on the same day between the 3 of them. Carpools were necessary. One played basketball in high school, one played soccer, and one rowed.. I had little choice but to go to all the games and cheer. But I didn’t really enjoy them. I did enjoy the rowing regattas. Beautiful outdoor settings ( and usually decent weather) and the races only last 6 minutes! Our son also rowed in college and later, in grad school in England. It’s beautiful to watch a good crew gliding through the water. One thing I really like about rowing is that it is a pure team sport. Everyone has to pull together - literally. There are no stars. No quarterbacks or star forwards or star anyone. It’s not a glamour sport and it’s not a money sport. No cheering crowds, no well paid product endorsements. It’s a sport that they participate in out of pure love. I miss the regattas. I don’t miss the basketball and soccer games. Now our grandchildren have started in youth sports. I’m not truly sorry that distance prevents us from going to their games! I don’t tell them that though. ;)
DeleteMy cousin went to West Catholic Boy’s HS in the early fifties and was on the rowing team. I have pictures of myself at age five brought by my aunt to one of the meets on the Schuylkill River. I agree with you on rowing. Maybe I’d like sports if there was less hoopla and obsession. I almost became a baseball fan at one time but then the players went on strike and that showed me how much money was involved.
DeleteMy kid ran track one year. Then it was marching band. We used to go to games just before halftime started so we could see the band show. Always used to warm my heart when the jock dads would quiet everybody up to listen to the band and then give the kids a standing ovation.
DeleteJean , that’s great that the marching band was applauded.. my high school didn’t have one, but we did have a band that sat in the stands and played during football and basketball games. No band at all for our sons’ high school sports - basketball, soccer and rowing. Two sons also ran cross- country- another uncelebrated sport! No glamour or cheering crowds.
DeleteI’m very glad your son had music, because that’s a love that he can continue to do his whole life. None of ours are musicians and I’m really sorry that they don’t.
Yah, he still does music stuff. Writes funny songs. I blame Weird Al. The place he works has a beer garden with a piano, and he sometimes plays jazz in there. He DJ'd as a side gig before COVID and has some hilarious high school prom and bridezilla stories. I got zero of the family artistic talent, but I learned to be an appreciative audience.
DeleteStanley, I spent many hours sitting on the grass on the banks of the Schuykill. The first time I went to Philadelphia after moving east was to go to a regatta my then boyfriend, later husband, was rowing in - a masters regatta. He rowed masters on and off until he was 64. He had a mild stroke then, and his Dr said he could row, but not compete. He continued to row a single until his arthritis made it too painful.
ReplyDeleteThen there were high school regattas for our son, including the three day Stotesbury for four years running when about 3000 high school rowers from all over the country competed. I still have good memories of those trips, and I also loved Boathouse Row.
https://www.visitphilly.com/things-to-do/attractions/boathouse-row/
PS. Stanley, Kelly Drive near the rowing course is named for Grace Kelly’s father, Jack Kelly. There is a statue of him there. He had a company - brickworks - and eventually became a millionaire. He was also a champion rower - a three time Olympian. When he applied to go to England to compete in the Henley Regatta in the 1920s, he was rejected because he was a manual laborer. My husband told me that at other international competitions he would wear a tee shirt for practicing that said “Kelly for Brickwork “. The Henley Regatta is one of the big British athletic social events like Ascot and Wimbledon. It’s a very charming town.
Deletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kelly_Sr._(rower)
Yes, Anne. Familiar with the Kelly rowing story. I understand he forbade his son to lift a finger in manual labor to insure he wouldn’t suffer the same fate. I associate the Kelly name with a time when the US was dynamic and prosperous. Glad you made it to the Schuylkill ( I rarely spell it right) River and Boathouse Row and your husband as a competitor. It’s all still there and still lovely.
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DeleteStanley, we were there a few years ago for a reunion of my husband’s college crew that won the Dad Vail long, long ago. It was nice to be back. Their team was feted, so we were in the VIP viewing tent, with food and all kinds of fun stuff. I think the young college rowers were amazed to see all these old men being honored could still walk. ( including my husband then)
DeleteI never spell the name of that river right!😁
One of my sons played water polo. Another not-popular sport. But a real brotherhood among the players.
ReplyDeleteI’m always amazed when someone can swim AND do something else at the same time. If someone asks me if I can swim, I tell them I can swim but not float. With flotation, I’ve pushed overturned canoes to the river’s edge because my kick was great. But without flotation, I’m a dead man. Must have swallowed some depleted uranium at some time in my life.
DeleteThree cheers for those who anticipate in the non- glamour sports and activities. I think the bonding that occurs in smaller, non- glamourous group activities like water polo or rowing or marching bands - any musical group endeavor - is very valuable.. Maybe even a tighter bond than the sports and activities that bring out the cheering crowds because they aren’t all competing to be the star . I am still in close contact with my high school friends that I sang with in choir, but also in a madrigal group together and a group of nine girls called the Triple Trio,
Delete- brought together by our shared love of singing.
Stan, always amazing to me that the US Navy does not require swimming and lifesaving in boot camp. Raber said they took the guys to the pool and made them put on life jackets and to bob around in deep water. For many years, British sailors or merchant marines eschewed learning to swim. The idea was that if you fell overboard you were a goner, and swimming would only prolong the inevitable.
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