Wimbledon, England – Animated Iga Swiatek stood by a chair in the centre court as she shook her head as she stared at the team.
Swiatek, 24, from Poland, defeated America’s Amanda Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 on Saturday, winning Wimbledon’s first title and sixth major championship, and was removed in just minutes.
“(It’s) pretty surreal,” said Swiatek, Wimbledon’s first women’s champion for the eighth consecutive time. “I’m proud of myself… who was expecting it?”
Swiatek, a four-time French Open champion who also won the 2022 US Open, has struggled mostly at Wimbledon throughout her career. The 2018 All-England Club junior champion never passed the quarterfinals in the main draw. Her only other final in Grass came when she was runner-up in the German tune-up event just before Wimbledon began.
But on Saturday – following a tournament run in which her drop dropped one set and six service games, Swiatek became the eighth female player and an active player to win major titles on all three surfaces.
No. 8 seed Swiatek broke Anisimova in the first game of the match and required only 57 minutes to become the first Polish woman to win Wimbledon.
After Steffigraw’s victory over Natashaz Beva at the 1988 French Open, she was the third women’s major final to score 6-0, 6-0, and the second in her open days. The double bagel only happened once in a Wimbledon title match in 1911, when Dorothea Lambert Chambers defeated Dora Boothby.
“She played very well and came out,” said Anishimoba, who came in 13th place. “So all the credits to her. She really managed to play the game she wanted. … I think I was a little frozen with my nerves. Maybe the last two weeks I was a little tired or something. She definitely made it difficult for me.
Swiatek, who won her 100 major match in her 120th career match, has become the fastest woman to win 100 major match since Serena Williams, who scored a mark in 116 matches at the 2004 US Open.
Swiatek also improved to 6-0 in the major finals and joined Monica Ceres on the second-longest winning streak to begin his open-age career after Roger Federer (7-0).
No woman has won more titles than Swiatek, as she first captured her at the 2020 French Open. Wimbledon also marked her 23rd tour level single title and her first grass. However, it was a challenging year for Swiatek, who had spent 2022, 2023 and 2024 in No. 1 in the WTA rankings and hadn’t won a title anywhere since the 2024 French Open.
A dominant favourite at last month’s French Open, Swiatek was upset by top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the semi-finals, causing her ranking to plummet to number 8.
During that stretch, Swiatek fired longtime coach Tomasz Wiktorowski and began working for Wim Fissette. She also served as a one-month doping ban last year after failing an out-of-competitive drug test. The investigation determined that she was inadvertently exposed to contaminated medical products used for sleep and pier troubles.
The loss to Sabalenka at Roland Garros gave Swiatek more time to prepare for the meadow season. She spent five days training in Mallorca on the surface before heading to Germany to continue practicing with the other players. She then arrived at the first grass final at Bad Homburg, just two days before the main draw at Wimbledon began.
Wimbledon’s opening round was filled with confusion, but Swiatek remained focused as the other top seeds created an early exit, dropping only one set against Katherine McNally.
Swiatek appears to be leveling her even further against Anishimoba on Saturday, scoring 55 out of 79 points, keeping Anishimoba to just nine points in the opening set. Anisimova was nervous from the start and made 28 powerful errors.
Swiatek shrugged and laughed when he asked her secret that she was extremely strong in the finals throughout her career.
“I think tennis is a mental sport, but you need everything to win a tournament… Good tennis, good physicality, not tired, you play a good match before, so you don’t spend too much time on the court and have a big focus,” Swiatek says. “The finals are a bit ugly because there is so much stress and everything, and I’ve used the experience for a while.
“Today I just wanted to enjoy my time on Centre Court and enjoy the last time I played well in Grass because I know who will happen again or not.
It was Swiatek and Anisimova’s first tour-level meeting. As teenagers in the 2016 Junior Fed Cup, they played only once before.
Wimbledon marked the groundbreaking tournament for Anishimoba, the fourth consecutive American woman, to reach the major final. The 23-year-old got off to a promising start in her career, reaching the French Open semi-finals in 2019 at the age of 17, but she has struggled quite a bit, including injuries and the unexpected death of her father, who was also a childhood coach.
Anisimova left his mental health out of touring more than two years ago. A year ago, she tried to qualify for Wimbledon. The rankings at 189th were too low to automatically enter the field, but they lost in a preliminary event.
Anishimova joined 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreesque and became the second woman in her open days after losing in qualifying in the same period last year. On Monday, she will break into the top ten in the rankings for the first time.
Swiatek’s Saturday victory was a surprise to her. At the on-court ceremony, she said winning Wimbledon was not something she dreamed of because it was “too far.”
She later elaborated, saying Wimbledon, along with her victory at the 2022 US Open, is particularly meaningful as she “no one expects.”
And that lack of pressure allowed her to play her best tennis over the course of two weeks.
“At last time no one told me to win everything,” Sweet said. “So I came here and I was able to really focus on getting better and growing as a player, rather than asking everyone to win or win.
“Even if the (lack of herbivorous success) was too high, I enjoyed it because my expectations were a little low.”
ESPN research and Associated Press contributed to this report.
