ANISIMOVA REACHES FRENCH OPEN SEMIFINALS

Born to Run. No Surrender. I'm on Fire.

Pick a Bruce Springsteen song, and there's a good chance you can apply it to New Jersey native Amanda Anisimova, the breakout star of the 2019 French Open, who was born a few miles from the rock icon in Freehold Township, N.J.

A remarkable year of firsts keeps getting better and better for the American teenager. Now, after dethroning the reigning Roland Garros champion, she’s just two wins away from her biggest “first” of all.

The 17-year-old upset 2018 champion Simona Halep, 6-2, 6-4, in just 68 minutes to advance to her maiden career Grand Slam semifinal. She’ll face another first-time semifinalist, world No. 8 Ashleigh Barty, on Friday for a spot in Saturday’s championship match.

“I don't think it will sink in, at least not for today,” Anisimova (pictured above) said in her post-match press conference. “Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. I really can't believe the result today. And getting the opportunity to play against Simona, that's amazing, but how it ended is even crazier to me.”

Really, you could describe the past 12 months as crazy. This time last year, Anisimova, born in New Jersey but raised in Florida, was in the third month of rehabilitating a right foot injury suffered in Miami.

She missed the French Open and the subsequent major at Wimbledon the following month, and she was No. 154 in the world with just one career Grand Slam main-draw match—a 2017 first-round loss in Paris—on her resume.

Now she’s projected to climb to at least No. 26 in the world, a career-best ranking that would almost certainly mean she’ll be seeded on the London lawns in three weeks time. A win over Barty, who beat Madison Keys in the other quarterfinal in the top half of the draw Thursday, would move her inside the Top 20, and a title in Paris could put her as high as No. 13.

On Thursday in the French capital, Anisimova played with confidence and aggression, apparently showing no sign of nerves that the occasion would have warranted.

“I didn't look nervous… because I wasn't,” Anisimova said. “I was just super excited, and I was really happy with the opportunity. I felt really good today, like, healthy, because early in the rounds I didn't really feel good. Playing tennis when you feel good is just really good. That's why I was really happy today to get to play healthy. I mean, yeah, I was just going out to—I was very excited. And to have this opportunity, I mean, it's just amazing. That's why I was playing really well in the first set. But in the second set, I was like, 'Oh, I have to do it again.'"

She broke Halep for a 4-2 lead in the sixth game of the first set, and after saving a break point on her own serve in the following game, she converted her third set point to seize an early advantage.

Anisimova kept her foot on the gas in opening up a 3-0 advantage to start the second set. And while Halep got back on serve by breaking at 4-2, the teenager punched her ticket to the final four by breaking the Romanian for a fourth time in the match and seal victory.

The win was her second career Top-10 victory—she beat two-time Wimbledon champ Petra Kvitova in Indian Wells last year—and her first win over a Top-5 player. It also means she has won eight Grand Slam matches in 2019. Only Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka and her semifinal opponent Barty have more.
 

Anisimova has said that she doesn’t like to look too far ahead. Has she let herself imagine what it would be like to lift a trophy two days from now?

“I'm not really thinking about that,” she said. “I'm just happy with today, and I'm really looking forward to my next match. I'm just letting it all kick in a little bit. I'm just really happy with everything that's been happening. I don't try to think about the future.”

Even if she doesn’t want to let herself wonder, "What if?", the future is coming quickly, both for her and for the next wave of American tennis. To steal a hit from The Boss released in Anisimova's lifetime, Dream, Baby, Dream.