Centre Court, Wimbledon. Amanda Anisimova sits hunched on the green chair. A towel covers the tears streaming down her face. It is a lonely moment. The voice of the umpire calling time barely registers on her shattered mind. But elite athletes work on muscle memory. She gets up, walks to her end of the court, and prepares for the inevitable.
In ninety seconds Anisimova’s agony is at an end. She has officially stepped into the record books as the second woman in Wimbledon history, and the first since 1911 to lose a final 0-6, 0-6. Her first grand slam final appearance has lasted all of 57-minutes. The dream is dead. Now the tears can flow.
A tennis court is one of the loneliest places on earth. Particularly on days when things don’t go right. In a boxing match you can get knocked out in a round. In wrestling it can last a few seconds. In tennis, on centre court, at the greatest of the grand slams, with a billion eyes watching you fall apart, there is no quick end to this agony. Tennis has no clock to run down, no bell to save you, no limited overs when the heartbreak stops. There are no teammates to hide behind or share the loss with. The psychological devastation is yours to handle. Alone. Amanda Anisimova Wimbledon loss
Amanda Anisimova knew she deserved to be in the final at SQW19, for hers had been a remarkable journey. A precocious teen talent from Florida slated for great things, devastatingly, at the age of 17 she lost her father, and the world fell apart. Recovering in a few months she started her climb up the senior ranks, only for her body to break down at regular intervals. Inevitably it affected the mind. She took a break. And then began the climb up the ranks that took her past Sabalenka in the semi-finals and into her first Grand Slam final.
And then it all went horribly wrong. Amanda Anisimova Wimbledon loss
So how do high performing athletes in individual sports like tennis deal with public humiliation, privately? How do they come back from this seeming abyss in their young lives? How do they go on to fulfill their destiny?
Novak Djokovic is a man who knows all about failures and bad days. He may be the most successful grand slam player of all time but he has lost plenty of matches where he’s melted down, grand slam sets where he has got bageled, and made multiple mistakes that have cost him titles. One of the greatest lessons that he has learned out of all this is that it is impossible to not think about failures, mistakes, and forgettable performances. Anyone who suggests otherwise, has never performed at the highest level, in sport or otherwise. The difference, Novak maintains, between a champion and an ordinary elite athlete, is the ability to ‘switch back’ to the present, and the speed at which they are able to do so.
Rafael Nadal, the greatest ‘comeback artist’ in sport, agrees. His resilience to bounce back whether it be from a continual series of injuries, or devastating losses, is legendary. Nadal’s mantra has always been to internalise failure, learn from it, work on what needs to improve and then focus on the present and future. Amanda Anisimova Wimbledon loss
Mental conditioning specialist Paddy Upton, a man who has worked with over 200 individual athletes including world chess Champion Gukesh, besides cricket, rugby and hockey teams, talks about not focusing on failures. In his experience, champions learn equally from their successes and failures and focus more on what has helped them get where they are, for the key to success for elite athletes is understanding what to do more of.
Amanda Anisimova finds herself at a crossroads today. She and every other athlete who is teetering at the edge of an abyss from public meltdowns must step back, take a deep breath, and reflect on the lessons from the likes of Djokovic, Nadal and Upton. With the right approach and mental makeup, a 0-6, 0-6 bageling at the greatest stage in tennis may well be the pivot that launches the next Serena Williams.
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