2025 Wimbledon Semifinal Preview: Women's Draw

We have reached the final weekend of Wimbledon 2025. Aryna Sabalenka, Amanda Anisimova, Iga Swiatek, and Belinda Bencic will battle it out to see who joins Madison Keys and Coco Gauff as 2025 Grand Slam champions.

The biggest Wild Card at Wimbledon is the surface. Grass court season is just one month of the year, so the incentive to be good on grass courts is lower than the other major surfaces despite its uniqueness. That may be why this year's crop of women's semifinalists features 0 previous finalists.

Let’s look at the Wimbledon women’s semifinals by reviewing how our models evaluated each player’s journey through the draw and ending with a prediction for each match.

(1) Aryna Sabalenka vs (13) Amanda Anisimova

This week, both Sabalenka and Anisimova have accomplished significant milestones in the rankings. On Monday, Sabalenka will become the 2nd woman and 6th player to ever pass 12,000 rankings points and Anisimova will enter the Top 10 for the first time.

When the draw first came out, Aryna Sabalenka was looking at a nightmare. In our pre-tournament analysis, we said that Sabalenka's section of the draw would define the tournament, especially in the Third Round, where she would have to go through one of McCartney Kessler, Marketa Vondrousova, and Emma Raducanu, all of whom are very good on grass. It wound up being Raducanu, in a match that was good enough to dominate television ratings. Despite holding and breaking serve at relatively high rates, Sabalenka has had a lot of trouble closing out sets. She has lost just 1 of her 11 sets, but she has played 3 tiebreakers and lost at least 4 games in 9 of them. We can look at as many statistics as we want, but one of the things that makes tennis great is that no matter the score, someone has to go out and win that last point. Aryna Sabalenka has struggled to do that at Wimbledon this year.

We also had a segment in our pre-tournament analysis about Amanda Anisimova, where we mentioned that a run to the semifinal was open for her, if she could just win her First Round match. Anisimova did not lose a game in that match, and despite losing two sets since then, she has been very solid. Anisimova has broken serve at least 30% of the time and held serve at least 80% of the time in all 5 of her matches so far. And she has done it without needing to get particularly lucky. Serve and Return CFOE Ratings tend to regress to 2 in wins, and while each of the other 3 players have had at least one match where one of their ratings was above 10, Anisimova has not even had to get as high as 7.

This match will probably come down to which version of Aryna Sabalenka shows up. The World #1 has a long track record of losing in Grand Slam semifinals. She has also struggled to close out sets, while Anisimova has not wavered yet, outside of a failure to close out the second set of her Quarterfinal. The other issue here for Sabalenka is the matchup itself. Anisimova leads 5-3 in the Head to Head.

Prediction: Anisimova in 3. Our model has Anisimova's win probability at 14%. Below are the predicted outcomes

(8) Iga Swiatek vs Belinda Bencic

Neither one of the players in this matchup was supposed to be here. Iga Swiatek has been having a down year by her standards, having made just one final since the Olympics and not won a title, and grass is her worst surface. Belinda Bencic gave birth to her daughter just 15 months ago and upset very good players in the last two rounds, on the way to her first career Wimbledon semifinal - a milestone that comes just one day after her first career Wimbledon quarterfinal.

Iga Swiatek has been one of the two best players behind her serve over the last three years, but a couple of players have been able to find their way into her service games at Wimbledon. She faced 10 break points in her Quarterfinal matchup with Liudmila Samsonova and 15 in the Second Round against Caty McNally. Despite that, she has been broken just 6 times in her 5 matches. She is, however, a candidate for mean regression on her serve. Her Serve CFOE Rating has been above 3 in 4 of her 5 matches. But whenever that regression comes, someone has to make her pay for it.

Belinda Bencic might be the player to make Swiatek pay for the mean regression, but she would need her own to hit at the same time. The last time Bencic had both a Serve CFOE Rating and Return CFOE Rating above 0 in a match was her First Round win over Alycia Parks. At the same time, though, Bencic is 4-0 in tiebreakers in SW19.

Iga Swiatek will get her licks in. That much is almost a given. But this match will come down to whether Belinda Bencic can match that with the limited opportunities that come her way. Our model has Swiatek as a heavy favorite in this contest, but Bencic has been overcoming the odds all year long.

Prediction: Swiatek in 2. Our model has Swiatek's win probability at 88%. Below are the predicted outcomes