Tour Pause Proved Reset Amanda Anisimova Needed

’22 CHARLESTON SEMIFINALIST: ‘IT FELT RIGHT IN MY GUT TO STEP AWAY’

Life can come at you in a hurry when you have the kind of early, breakout success Amanda Anisimova had when she debuted on the WTA Tour.

The daughter of Russian emigres Olga Anisimova and Konstantin Anisimov, she was born in Springsteen country, Freehold Township, New Jersey, in 2001. She picked up the sport at five, influenced by her sister, Maria, a collegiate player at Penn. By the time she was 15, she was the No. 2 junior in the world.

Many of us got our first glimpse of Anisimova in 2018, when, in Stadium 1 in Indian Wells, she stunned two-time Wimbledon titlist Petra Kvitova, then No. 9 in the PIF WTA Rankings, 6-2, 6-4. Anisimova was the youngest player to reach the Round of 16 in the desert in more than a decade.

She reached her first Grand Slam semifinal at Roland Garros in 2019, but later that same year lost her father to a reported heart attack.

It was a lot to deal with given all the demands that came with her new life, and her ranking would stall over the next few years despite occasional high points. By 2023, Anisimova says, she needed a break. She would go back to school, attending Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. She began making paintings, posting scenes from her new chapter on Instagram. It was just the normalcy she needed.

“The lifestyle is very stressful and chaotic, and I personally couldn’t be in that environment anymore. I just needed some time away from it.” — Amanda Anisimova

“I loved my life, but I just needed to work on myself,” said Anisimova this week in Charleston, where the eighth seed through to the third round of the WTA 500 event. “There were a lot of things I was struggling with, especially mentally, so I just think I needed a break from everything. The lifestyle is very stressful and chaotic, and I personally couldn’t be in that environment anymore. I just needed some time away from it. I’m thankful and grateful for all of the things I got to do during that time, going to school, being with my friends and family more. But I also did a lot of work in therapy.”

Yes, there were doubts that the 5-foot-11 baseliner could return to her level after any prolonged work stoppage, but that was a risk Anisimova was willing to take.

“That was, for sure, a thought in my mind. It was something people around me were telling me, too, to try to consider everything before I took a break because I was already at a pretty high level,” explained Anisimova, 23.

“Some people told me, ‘If you take a long time away from tennis, you might not get back to this level.’ But despite that being a fear in my head, I knew it was the right thing for me to do. It felt right in my gut that I just needed to step away, and whatever happened after that I was okay accepting if I came back and never returned to that level.”

The pause appears to have done Anisimova good. That form some worried would never reappear indeed did. Her 2024 comeback included a run to her first WTA 1000 final in Toronto (l. to Jessica Pegula, 6-3, 2-6, 6-1). This year she took that one step further, winning her maiden 1000 title in Doha, defeating Latvian Jelena Ostapenko in the trophy match, 6-4, 6-3. Anisimova arrived in the Lowcountry this week for the 2025 Credit One Charleston Open at a career-high No. 16, happy to be back where she reached the semifinals in 2022.