Despite losing in an early round of the Australian Open this year to Emma Raducanu, Amanda Anisimova showed an incredible ability for ball striking and willingness to continue going for her shots and playing the right offensive game style that gave me the impression and hope that she would bring a lot more victories as the season progressed.
Her summer months involved incredible results for her young career, and one of the most important pieces was the very difficult time that she had by losing the finals of the Wimbledon title 6/0 6/0 to Iga. This had to be a heartbreaking result, and she decided to take a week off after the tournament and go over to the coast of New Jersey for a week of relaxation and surfing with her friends.
After a short Harcourt season, she was ready to play in the U.S. Open, and she said in one of the first press conferences that her main goal was to win one round at this event. Clearly after two weeks of battles and a big victory against Iga in the semifinals, a sense of redemption was created because of the previous Wimbledon result. She managed to play a strong and emotional finals against Sabalenka, and despite the fact that she didn’t come out with a victory, she is now positioned herself in the top five players in the world.
The more and more that I reflect on this trajectory, the more comes to mind that the important piece here is for all of us to understand that this is exactly the game that we play, and the game that we signed up for. We play a game of uncertainty; we play a game of ups and downs; we play a game of tears and a game of big hugs and smiles. The pros obviously do a better job than we do at managing those emotions and those tribulations, but it is important that we understand and grab onto those ideas, so that we exercise the ability to only use bad results as ways to learn something from, and we focus on the things that we do well and try to concentrate on training and competing with those strengths.
My personal homework for our student body and for our coaches is to pay close attention to all the matches that we watched during the French Open, Wimbledon and US Open this year because a lot of the players showed areas that needed improvements if they wanted to get more consistent results at the highest levels. Because we recognize those areas of focus, I am sure their coaching teams also recognize them and more. It’s going to be a very interesting last part of the season and beginning of 2026.
The level of play that we are watching on TV as well as the level of tennis that is displayed at the college level and at the junior level is so high at the moment. This is very exciting because I know that our team is working very hard not only to continue the participation of our players but committed to their progress and the focus on playing the game the right way from the tactical, from the technical, from the emotional and from the psychological sides. Keep an eye on the progress that the pros are making and keep an eye on the progress that our kids are making because the work is being done, and we are looking forward for that progress to materialize into better results as the months go by.
See you on the courts!
