The New Jersey native has spent three years quietly rebuilding her software, and the early returns suggest the upgrade took. The question is whether it survives contact with the two women who broke her last summer.
Two finals, no trophy
Iga Swiatek didn't just beat Anisimova in last year's Wimbledon final. She erased her. A double bagel — 6-0, 6-0 — is the scoreline tennis players carry in their bones for years, a public vivisection that announces exactly where the gap between elite and best is widest. Three months later, Aryna Sabalenka did something arguably more revealing at the US Open final: she dropped a set's worth of tension into a second-set tiebreak and still closed the door in straight sets. Anisimova forced the tiebreak. She didn't win the match. Back-to-back Grand Slam finals in 2025, two different kinds of defeat — and exactly zero trophies to show for the climb.
In modern women's tennis, the player who can return everything eventually discovers that returning everything is not the same as dictating. Swiatek's lefty geometry and Sabalenka's power architecture aren't puzzles you outlast. You out-think them. Or you lose.
The reset that rebuilt the ranking
In May 2023, Anisimova walked away. Burnout, mental fatigue — the standard exit ramp of the modern athlete, except hers wasn't a tantrum. She dropped to No. 373 in the WTA rankings during an eight-month hiatus, the kind of descent that usually ends careers. Instead, it ended her old operating system. By 2025 she was No. 3 in the world, a career high, with WTA 1000 titles from the Qatar Ladies Open and the China Open on the résumé — proof the rebuild was tactical, not just therapeutic.
In her USA Today interview, Anisimova framed the break as a competitive advantage rather than a vulnerability. "One of the most important things in life is taking a break and how important it is to reset, not just for your body, but also for your mind," she said. "It taught me everything about how important it is to have a good balance on and off of the court." The brand partnership delivering the venue doesn't change what she actually said: she's figured out where her old ceiling was and is now approaching it from a different hallway.
What the draw asks of her
The harder question is whether the mental reset holds when the scoreline tilts. Anisimova admitted, per USA Today, that the finals still flood her memory. "I do get flooded with the memories of the final last year and how close I was to achieving my dream," she said. "I'm really trying to reset and come back to the little things that I need to do day in and day out." That language — "day in and day out" — is the dialect of a player trying not to stare at the trophy. It's also the only dialect that gets you through a third set against Swiatek.
She opened the 2026 US Open in mixed doubles alongside Learner Tien, a useful tell: a player conserving mind and body before the singles draw catches fire. Whether that conservative instinct survives a quarterfinal against the woman who bageled her, or the woman who tied her up at her own tournament, is the test of the fortnight. The ranking says she belongs in the conversation. The scars say she has unfinished business with the top of the game.