WIMBLEDON, England -- An animated Iga Swiatek stood by her chair on Centre Court and shook her head as she stared toward her team, clearly in disbelief of what she had just achieved.
Swiatek, a 24-year-old from Poland, was just minutes removed from defeating American Amanda Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 in a dominant display Saturday to earn her first Wimbledon title and sixth major championship, and she was now getting set to receive the Venus Rosewater Dish from the Princess of Wales.
"[It's] pretty surreal," said Swiatek, the eighth consecutive first-time women's champion at Wimbledon. "I'm just proud of myself because ... who would have expected that?"
A four-time French Open champion who also won the 2022 US Open, Swiatek had largely struggled at Wimbledon throughout her career. A junior champion at the All England Club in 2018, she had never been past the quarterfinals in the main draw. Her only other final on grass came when she was the runner-up at a tuneup event in Germany right before Wimbledon began.
But on Saturday -- following a tournament run that saw her drop just one set and six service games -- Swiatek became the eighth women's player, and only active one, to win a major title on all three surfaces.
Swiatek broke Anisimova in the first game of the match and needed just 57 minutes to become the first Polish woman to win Wimbledon.
It was just the third women's major final to feature a 6-0, 6-0 score, and the second in the Open era, after Steffi Graf's win against Natasha Zvereva at the 1988 French Open. The double bagel had happened at Wimbledon only once prior, in 1911 when Dorothea Lambert Chambers defeated Dora Boothby.
"She came out playing very, very well," Anisimova said. "So all the credit to her. She was able to really play the game she wanted. ... I think I was a bit frozen there with my nerves. Maybe the last two weeks I got a bit tired or something. She definitely made it difficult for me. She's an unbelievable player ... she deserves this win."
Swiatek, who earned her 100th major win in her 120th career match, became the fastest woman to 100 major match wins since Serena Williams, who reached the mark in 116 matches at the 2004 US Open.
Swiatek also improved to 6-0 in major finals, joining Monica Seles with the second-longest win streak to start a career in the Open era, after Roger Federer (7-0).
No woman has won more titles than Swiatek since she captured her first at the 2020 French Open; Wimbledon marked her 23rd tour-level singles title and also her first on grass. But it had been a challenging year for Swiatek, who hadn't won a title anywhere since the 2024 French Open after spending most of 2022, 2023 and 2024 at No. 1 in the WTA rankings.
The overwhelming favorite at last month's French Open, Swiatek was upset by top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals, and her ranking plummeted to No. 8. She went 15 straight WTA main draw events without claiming a title, the second-longest drought of her career.
During that stretch, Swiatek fired longtime coach Tomasz Wiktorowski and started working with Wim Fissette. She also served a one-month doping ban last year after failing an out-of-competition drug test; an investigation determined she was inadvertently exposed to a contaminated medical product used for trouble with sleeping and jet lag.
The loss to Sabalenka at Roland Garros gave Swiatek more time to prepare for the grass-court season -- something she hadn't gotten much of a chance to do in recent years. She spent five days in Mallorca training on the surface before heading to Germany to continue practicing with other players. She then reached her first grass final at Bad Homburg, just two days before the main draw at Wimbledon got underway.
While the opening rounds of Wimbledon were filled with upsets, Swiatek remained focused and relentless as other top seeds made early exits, dropping just one set against Catherine McNally and seemingly improving with every match.
Swiatek appeared to raise her level even more Saturday against Anisimova, winning 55 of 79 points and holding Anisimova to just nine points in the opening set. Anisimova, nervy from the start, made 28 unforced errors.
When asked her secret to being so strong in finals throughout her career, Swiatek shrugged and laughed before answering.
"I think tennis is a mental sport, but also you need everything to win tournaments ... good tennis, good physicality, being also not tired, have good matches before so you don't spend too much time on the court, having great focus," Swiatek said. "Finals sometimes are a bit ugly because there's so much stress and everything. I kind of used the experience from before.
"Today I just wanted to enjoy the time that I had on the Centre Court and enjoy the last hours of me playing well on grass, because who knows if it's going to happen again. I just focused on that, and I really had fun."
It was the first tour-level meeting between Swiatek and Anisimova; they had played just once before, as teenagers at the 2016 junior Fed Cup.
Wimbledon marked a breakthrough tournament for Anisimova, the fourth consecutive American woman to reach a major final. The 23-year-old had a promising start to her career, reaching the French Open semifinals in 2019 at age 17, but she has had her fair share of struggles since, including injuries and the unexpected death of her father, who had also been her childhood coach.
Anisimova took a mental health break away from the tour a little more than two years ago. A year ago, she tried to qualify for Wimbledon, because her ranking of 189th was too low to get into the field automatically, but she lost in the preliminary event.
Anisimova became just the second woman in the Open era to reach a major final after losing in qualifying at the same major the year prior, joining 2019 US Open champion Bianca Andreescu. On Monday, she'll break into the top 10 in the rankings for the first time.
Swiatek's victory Saturday was a surprise even to her. In the on-court ceremony, she said winning Wimbledon wasn't something she had ever even dreamed of because it was "just way too far."
She later elaborated and said Wimbledon, along with her win at the 2022 US Open, was particularly meaningful because "no one expected" either of them.
And that lack of pressure, she said, allowed her to play her best tennis over the fortnight.
"Finally no one was telling me to win everything," Swiatek said. "So coming here, I could really focus on getting better and developing as a player rather than everybody just asking me to win, win, and nothing is good besides winning.
"Even if [lack of grass-court success] was too big of a story, I kind of enjoyed that because expectations were a bit lower."
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.