Anastasia Potapova ended Amanda Anisimova’s U.S. Open run on Saturday, beating her 6-2, 7-5 in the third round and moving into the fourth round. It was a straight-sets result that never fully reflected how close the second set became, even after Potapova served for the match, was broken, and then held at the second attempt.
For readers searching Potapova now, the result fits a pattern that has been building at Grand Slams. In June, she knocked out Coco Gauff in the third round of the French Open, and now she has taken out another top American at a major. Potapova, a native Russian who now represents Austria, looked steady enough to absorb the pressure when it mattered and leave Louis Armstrong Stadium with the win in 90 minutes.
The setting mattered. Louis Armstrong Stadium can turn a match into a test of control when the wind keeps pushing the ball around, and that is where Anisimova’s problems sharpened. Her first-strike game depends on timing and clean contact, but the conditions made that harder to trust. Instead of stepping in and finishing points on her terms, she was forced into longer exchanges and more margin. She committed 18 forehand errors and won just half of the points on her first serve, numbers that told the story of a player who never quite settled into the match.
That was the hard part for Anisimova, because this was supposed to be a season in which she had already shown she could belong near the top. She reached the Wimbledon final in 2025, rose to No. 4 in the world and made the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, but she has not made the second week of the past three Grand Slams. After her run to the U.S. Open final last year, this felt like a step backward, even though she said her game had been coming around. She also described the season as “pretty average” and pointed to a wrist injury that sidelined her for six weeks before the French Open.
The coaching picture adds another layer. Anisimova parted ways in the spring with Hendrik Vleeshouwers, later worked with Sebastian Sachs and then reunited with Vleeshouwers for the North American hard court swing. She said Vleeshouwers was back on her team full-time and added, “Oh, yeah, of course, I’m gonna continue working with him, and today’s match doesn’t change our partnership.” But the changes did not prevent another straight-sets exit when she needed a cleaner answer against Potapova.
Potapova will face Mirra Andreeva next after Andreeva beat Nikola Bartůňková 6-2, 7-6, and the matchup now carries the same question Potapova has been answering all summer: how far can this run go when she keeps taking down players with bigger expectations attached to them?
