Anisimova vs Tararudee — a troubled season meets a career-best one
Preview · National Bank Open, Toronto (WTA 1000) · Second round · 4 August 2026
Twelve months ago Amanda Anisimova was reaching Grand Slam finals and collecting WTA 1000 titles. This season has offered almost none of that, and she has been unusually candid about how little she understands why. She opens in Toronto against Lanlana Tararudee, a 22-year-old Thai player who arrives in the opposite state of mind: at the highest ranking she has ever held, having won far more than she has lost all year, and with a first-round win already in hand.
The matchup
Anisimova, the eighth seed, remains a top-ten player and was as high as No. 3 after a 2025 that brought titles in Doha and Beijing and finals at Wimbledon and the US Open. The 24-year-old American’s game has not changed shape — early, flat, brutally clean hitting off both wings, particularly the backhand — but the reliability of it has. She has spoken openly about a forehand she is still trying to solve.
Tararudee reached a career-high ranking in the high 70s in late July and has built the season on volume: a heavy schedule across tour and second-tier events, a stack of titles at that level, and a hard-court record this year that reads far better than most players ranked around her. She is a compact, well-organised competitor who does not beat herself. What she has not yet done in any quantity is win at WTA 1000 level against seeded opposition.
The two have never met.
Form & conditions
Anisimova’s year has been fragmented rather than simply poor. An injury forced her out of Berlin during the grass swing, and her Wimbledon ended in the third round against Madison Keys — a defeat that visibly hurt, and after which she compared her own level unfavourably to a lower-tier event. That is a player short of matches and shorter of trust, arriving here without a competitive hit in Toronto because of her bye.
Tararudee, meanwhile, came through her opener against the Australian teenager Emerson Jones 7-6(2) 6-2, taking a tight first set on a tie-break and then running away with the second. She has now had a full look at the courts and the conditions.
The deciding factor
Whether Anisimova can play at 80 per cent of her ceiling. That is genuinely all this requires: her worst version is beatable by anyone, but her merely adequate version still hits through opponents in this ranking bracket, because Tararudee’s method depends on absorbing pace and redirecting it rather than on generating her own. The danger scenario is a scrappy, error-strewn first set in which Anisimova’s forehand betrays her, the crowd goes quiet, and a confident underdog realises the door is open.
The call
Anisimova is the lean, with medium confidence. The class differential is substantial and the surface suits her, but a season this uneven does not permit a firmer reading, and a first set going the wrong way would make this genuinely uncomfortable.
