Tatjana Maria and Amanda Anisimova launched their grass seasons at the Queen’s Club by showing again that it’s never too late to win big, and never too late to reset your career. 

The grass may host a blink-and-you-miss-it season, but it always delivers on the drama and the storylines, and it lived up to its billing in its first week. Women’s  tennis was back at Queen’s for the first time since 1974, and the players returned in style, giving tennis a fairy-tale ending. Disney is calling, wanting a word with Tatjana Maria.

 Maria, 37 and ranked 86th in the world, hadn’t won a single first-round match in her previous nine tournaments when she entered qualifying at Queen’s. Sure, we knew her game was perfectly suited for grass, with her sharp backhand slice and her fondness for the net, but it seemed to many that her incredible run to the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2022 was a result plucked from a bygone era. Unbeknownst to the rest of the field at Queen’s, Maria was about to tear through the draw, clinching her fourth title and reminding everyone she was still an opponent’s nightmare on grass.

 Maria’s win was an even more poignant story as it came against former wunderkind Amanda Anisimova. Two very different career paths, but the same story, where success only comes when the player is ready. Anisimova, now 23, reached the semifinals at Roland-Garros in 2019 when she was just 17. She had it all: the power, one of the sweetest backhands in the game, and loads of charisma. But life came for her the same year, with the death of her father. And then came her struggles. Anisimova lost her way, despite finding moments of occasional grace, such as her run to the second week at the Australian Open, in 2022, with coach Darren Cahill, and to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon the same year. Still, tennis lost Anisimova when, mentally drained, she decided to take a break in 2023. 

 Yet, the same way Tatjana Maria found her best game in her 30s, Anisimova, thanks to her run at Queen’s, has reached her highest ranking to date (13th), launching a kind of second career in the process. 

 While away from tennis, Anisimova went to college, enjoyed a normal life, learned to paint, and only then came back. Because she wanted to, not because she felt she had to. It has taken some time to pay off, and some more time for her body to adjust to the rigors of the tour, but this year she won her first WTA 1000 title in Doha and advanced again to the second week at Roland-Garros. She’s still not as consistent as we’d like, but she’s finally happy to be out there. Will getting to the final at the Queen’s after beating Zheng Qinwen for the first time be a trigger for a deep run at Wimbledon? Let’s see. 

 Will Queen’s winner Tatjana Maria be propelled to another epic? Maybe. She is nowadays talked about mostly for her longevity and taken as an example of how to have it all, having had two kids by the time she semifinaled at Wimbledon. Sure, before her there was Kim Clijsters, but if you looked for a player who was not a star to give guidance to the field, you always came back to Maria. The German can be seen all season long with her husband/coach and kids in tow, a smile on her face, fire in the racquet. 

 “It’s incredible to see what she’s doing, and her family is so cute, seeing her kids coming everywhere,” said Anisimova, who would be Maria’s last victim (6–3, 6–4). It’s not just that Maria became the oldest player to win a WTA event. It’s not just that she was on that dreadful nine-first-round loss streak before arriving in West London. And it’s not about what it says about her mental strength that she still wants to go through it all. It’s mostly about who she beat on the way to that title.

 After winning three matches in qualies, Maria had to go through four top 20 players to get her hands on the trophy. The lowest-ranked player she faced in the main draw was Canadian Leylah Fernandez (no slouch at 30th in the world). Besides Leylah, Maria went through two more Grand Slam finalists (Karolina Muchova and Elena Rybakina), the reigning Australian Open champion (Madison Keys), and an on-the-rise-again, 14-years-her junior Amanda Anisimova. How many sets were lost in seven matches? One. 

 “I’m a good example that even at my age, you can still win big trophies,” Maria told the press after the final. “I’m super proud of myself that I could win this tournament because actually, I always believed in it, and my husband too. That’s why we kept going.” Maria winning at the Queen’s, 51 years after the last women’s match was played there, with a throwback game, is quite the wink from history. It’s also a great lesson for the next generations who, for some impossible-to-understand reason, have decided it wasn’t worth it to get a decent slice. (And it’s not even a shot of the past: Just ask Ash Barty!) 

 “Grass is perfect for my slice,” said Maria. “I am serving well, I can play a lot of slice, I can go to the net. I can play exactly how I would like to play, and the surface takes every single thing from it. It’s a perfect fit for my game. It actually helps me that nobody plays my style, and everybody has to get used to playing against me. Of course, my game on grass, nobody wants to play me, which is an advantage,” she said after cruising through the draw in London.

 “Just not something you’re used to,” Anisimova said of Maria’s playing style. “I mean, in most of my matches, I’m not getting a slice after every single ball. It’s definitely different.” Why not try to take something from it? Imagine the power of Anisimova with a strong slice in her toolbox. The only top player of this next generation who has really worked to add other weapons to her big-hitting game is Aryna Sabalenka, and look what that’s done for her career. 

 Tatjana Maria winning in London is also a reminder that maybe more players should acquire a slice. And a drop shot. And a good volley. It’s never too late to win the biggest title in your career, to get that career back on track, to add more layers to your game, to shine. Tatjana Maria and Amanda Anisimova were two faces of the same tennis coin throughout the week at the Queen’s, proving, in their own ways, it’s never too late to find your form.