"I’m going to completely lose all sense of rationality for like 48 hours": Deflated and crestfallen Amanda Anisimova crashes out of Australian Open

Amanda Anisimova’s run at the 2026 Australian Open came to an end in the quarter-finals on Wednesday, as she was beaten 6–2, 7–6 by Jessica Pegula.

While the result was not the one she hoped for, Anisimova said reaching the last eight still represented a positive tournament overall, while acknowledging the level Pegula brought on the day. “I think making the quarters is a good result,” Anisimova said. “Jess was playing well today. It’s obviously not the outcome I would have wanted.”

Asked about the difficulty of finding her rhythm during the match, Anisimova admitted she struggled to feel the ball and was unable to settle into her usual patterns of play.

“When you’re not feeling it, you try to be consistent, right, to get the ball into the court,” she explained. “I was trying my best to just put the ball in the court and play higher percentage, but I literally missed every ball into the net or served into the stands.”

She credited Pegula’s steadiness for making the situation even harder. “She was playing great tennis. She’s always playing stable. I don’t think there are often times where she’s not playing her best, and I was just playing like that today. I was doing my best trying to get the ball over the net, but every time it would just go into the net.”

That consistency, Anisimova said, is one of Pegula’s biggest strengths and one of the toughest things to face when her own game is slightly off. “She doesn’t make many mistakes, so if your game is off like today, it obviously makes it a bit more difficult,” she said. “Sometimes I was able to find myself in the match and find my way back into it somehow, but the fact that she plays such consistent tennis, it’s not easy. You have to make at least two or three balls in the court.”

Pegula’s defensive work came as no surprise, with Anisimova instead pointing the focus inward. "That’s how I expected her to play, so it wasn’t surprising,” she said. “If anything, I was just more surprised by my own game.”

Despite the performance, Anisimova revealed there were no warning signs before stepping onto Rod Laver Arena. “I had a great warm-up and I was feeling good. I was feeling calm for the majority of the day,” she said. “Then I was just missing by a little bit every time in the first set — super small margins. Sometimes that’s just the way it is in tennis. It’s really not going your way, or you’re missing by a little bit.”

She added that learning how to respond in those moments will be a key takeaway from the match. “I need to figure out what goes wrong in those moments and how I can clear myself and get myself back in the game, and just play with bigger targets,” she said. “I need to learn from this match and figure out what I did wrong.”

Gauff incident and compartmentalising loss

Anisimova was also asked about the increased behind-the-scenes camera coverage at the tournament, following comments made by Coco Gauff earlier in the week about privacy.

“You kind of know after a few days — four or five days — that obviously you see on the internet just you walking around,” Anisimova said. “So I knew that was there, and I just kept my head down and went to the locker room.”

She acknowledged that while some moments captured can be positive, others can be far more difficult after a loss. “There are good moments, obviously, that people see, and that’s fun. Then when you lose, there are probably not-so-good moments,” she said. “I think the fact that the video of Coco that was posted is tough, because she didn’t have a say in that.”

By the later stages of the tournament, Anisimova said she had already adjusted her expectations around privacy. “This deep into the tournament I knew that I didn’t have much privacy, so I just went to the locker room. I knew I was able to just be there.”

Reflecting on the emotional toll of defeat, Anisimova admitted that losses can feel heavier as expectations rise.

“As a tennis player, you can be very irrational,” she said. “Obviously I’m very grateful for the life that I have and the career I have, but you kind of lose your mind after matches like this.”

She added that processing a loss often takes time. “After a day like today, I’m going to completely lose all sense of rationality for like 48 hours,” she said. “That’s just what goes into working so hard for something and then having matches and days like this. It’s different than any other career.”

Despite the disappointment, Anisimova finished by underlining her gratitude for her position in the sport. “That’s what makes tennis very tough, but also we have a great life and I’m grateful for what I do,” she said. “It’s definitely very hard to process and go through, but yeah.”