LONDON (AP) — For years, Iga Swiatek never quite felt comfortable on Wimbledon's grass courts, never thought she could add a trophy there to her other Grand Slam triumphs. Oh, did that turn out to be wrong. And how.
Not only is Swiatek now the champion of the All England Club, she did it with a 6-0, 6-0 victory over Amanda Anisimova on Saturday in the first women's final at the tournament in 114 years in which one player failed to claim a single game.
“It seems,” said Swiatek, a 24-year-old from Poland who is now 6-0 in major title matches, “super surreal.”
That's also a good way to describe the way things unfolded at a sunny, breezy Centre Court against the 13th-seeded Anisimova, a 23-year-old American who was participating in her first Slam final.
With Kate, the Princess of Wales, sitting in the Royal Box and on hand to present the trophies, the whole thing took just 57 minutes. The previous 6-0, 6-0 Wimbledon women's final was all the way back in 1911.
“Honestly, I didn’t even dream (of this), because for me, it was just, like, way too far, you know?” Swiatek said. “I feel like I’m already an experienced player after winning the Slams before, but I never really expected this one.”
She won 55 of Saturday's 79 points despite needing to produce merely 10 winners. Anisimova was shaky from the start and made 28 unforced errors.
“You’re such an incredible player. It obviously showed today,” Anisimova told Swiatek. “You’ve been such an inspiration to me. Just an unbelievable athlete.”
Swiatek already owned four titles from the French Open’s red clay and one from the U.S. Open’s hard courts, but this is first one of her professional career at any grass-court tournament. And it ended a long-for-her drought: Swiatek last won a trophy anywhere more than a year ago, at Roland-Garros in June 2024.
Swiatek is the eighth consecutive first-time women’s champion at Wimbledon, but this stands out because of just how stunningly dominant it was.
Anisimova won her first-round match less than two weeks ago by a 6-0, 6-0 score and eliminated No. 1-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals on Thursday, but she never looked like she was the same player this time. Not at all.
“No matter what happened today,” Swiatek told Anisimova, “you should be proud of the work you’re doing.”
When it was over, while Swiatek climbed into the stands to celebrate with her team, Anisimova sat on the sideline in tears.
Swiatek never had been past the quarterfinals of the All England Club and her only other final on the slick surface came when she was the runner-up at a tuneup event in Germany right before Wimbledon began.
Swiatek spent most of 2022, 2023 and 2024 at No. 1 in the WTA rankings but was seeded No. 8 at Wimbledon. She served a one-month doping ban last year after failing an out-of-competition drug test; an investigation determined she was inadvertently exposed to a contaminated medical product used for trouble sleeping and jet lag.
Anisimova, who was born in New Jersey and grew up in Florida, was a semifinalist at age 17 at the 2019 French Open. Her father died soon after that. On Saturday, Anisimova's mother flew to England, a rare instance of her attending one of her daughter's matches.
“My mom is the most selfless person I know, and she’s done everything to get me to this point in my life,” Anisimova said through tears, then spoke to her mother directly, saying: “Thank you for being here and breaking the superstition of flying in.”
And then, with a chuckle, Anisimova added: “It's definitely not why I lost today.”
She took time away from the tour a little more than two years ago because of burnout. A year ago, she tried to qualify for Wimbledon, because her ranking of 189th was too low to get into the field automatically, but lost in the preliminary event.
Now she'll break into the top 10 in the rankings for the first time.
“It’s been an incredible fortnight for me. Even though I ran out of gas a bit today, and I wish that I could put on a better performance for all of you,” Anisimova told the crowd, “you guys have still been there for me and lifted me up today.”
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Howard Fendrich, The Associated Press
