Amanda Anisimova held off a valiant second-set fightback from Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Tuesday, 6-1, 7-6 (9), to advance to her first Wimbledon semifinal.
It’s the second Grand Slam semifinal of her career, after she reached the final four at Roland Garros in 2019, as a 17-year-old.
And she made history with her latest win: she’s the first woman born in the 2000s to reach the semifinals of Wimbledon.
At least four different women born in 2000 or later had reached the semifinals of every other Grand Slam event before this, but it had never happened at Wimbledon until today.
Iga Swiatek and Mirra Andreeva can match Anisimova’s feat tomorrow, should they win their quarterfinal matches at SW19.
It originally looked like one-way traffic on Tuesday as Anisimova stormed out to a 6-1, 5-2 lead, but it wasn’t over—far from it, in fact.
After Pavlyuchenkova held to close the second-set gap to 5-3, Anisimova got broken while serving for the match in the next game—then, at 5-4, she brought up double match point on Pavlyuchenkova’s serve, but she dug out of it and held, and a few holds later the two found themselves in a tie-break.
Pavlyuchenkova continued her comeback there, not only bringing up triple set point at 6-3, but—after missing out on those opportunities—getting a fourth and fifth set point at 7-6 and 8-7. But Anisimova fought those off too, and after missing out on a third match point at 9-8 she finally converted on her fourth to clinch the breaker, 11-9, and a spot in the semifinals.
“It was a super tough match there. A really big battle. She’s a really tough player, tough opponent,” Anisimova said afterwards.
“I’m just really happy with the way I was able to stick it through there and fight my way back and get the win.”
Awaiting Anisimova in the semifinals on Thursday will be the world No. 1, Aryna Sabalenka, who survived a two-hour-and-54-minute battle against surprise quarterfinalist Laura Siegemund, the world No. 104, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4.
Anisimova leads Sabalenka in their overall head-to-head, 5-3, though Sabalenka has won three of their last four meetings, and their last two meetings at Grand Slams in straight sets.
This will be the first time they play each other on grass.