Staying in for the Night

Under the closed roof, Madison Keys swung big and won big to reach her first Australian Open final.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Southern Hemisphere summer has mostly broken here in Melbourne, at least for the rest of the tournament. Temperatures as the Australian Open women’s semifinals night session ticked into its second match were around 61°F / 16°C, so I’d brought a hoodie with me to Rod Laver Arena.

But I never came close to needing it once in my seat. With the roof closed due to intermittent drizzles, the temperature inside Laver was unexpectedly toasty and cozy. It was easy to see that longtime Floridian Madison Keys looked warm and loose and free inside. Without any breeze to blow her aim wayward, Keys was swinging big, and making much more than she was missing.

“I typically like to play when I'm a little bit sweatier and there's a little bit more temperature,” Keys said afterward. “I mean, I'd be lying if I said we don't love when there's no wind.”

Keys was inside and so were her shots, with some of her biggest belts—shots that might have peppered the back wall on a bad day of yore—landing just within the lines time and time again.

Keys would have blown many opponents clear into oblivion at this caliber, but with an in-form Iga Swiatek across the net, the momentum pendulum swung between the two countless times in the third set alone. Just as I watched the ball belted back-and-forth on the court, so too did I watch my colleague Tumaini Carayol of The Guardian toggle between his two open documents—“Swiatek W” and “Keys W”—unsure which deadline result story he’d need to file until the very end.¹

Only one thing seemed certain as the match wore on: having come so close but so far so many times before, it was going to end in tears for Keys either way.

But after saving a match point on Swiatek’s serve at 6-5 in the third set, Keys came back from a 5-7 deficit in the first-to-10 third set tiebreak, winning the match 5-7, 6-1, 7-6(8) and making the tears happy ones.

Madison Keys flying the flag under the roof. (Photo by Ben Rothenberg)

Closer, to Free

Keys had lost her four most recent major semifinals; the last one at the 2023 U.S. Open was especially agonizing.

After an untouchable start to that match, Keys had had all of these leads:

Only to fall well short in two tiebreaks and lose 6-0, 6-7(1), 6-7(5).

Knowing how much was expected of Keys since before she was a teenager—and how she might have felt like she might never get another chance at a long-awaited major title again—made the loss one of the most excruciating in recent memory.

Keys admitted after her win in Melbourne on Thursday night that she’d had those questions herself after being so close against Sabalenka:

“I would be lying if I said that there wasn't doubts I think that felt like such a huge moment. I felt like I was so close. To be that close and to lose it was just so heartbreaking.

“I felt like I'd really left it all out there. That's really all you can ask. But at the end of the day, it's still such a tough one to have to go home on.

“So that one took a little while to kind of heal from and get past. But I think, at the same time, I just kept telling myself that if I just keep putting in the work and doing my best and leaving it all out there, that's the only thing that I can do and that's the only thing that I can control.”

Coming so close so many times over the course of her career had also been paralyzing for Keys going forward.

“I probably just got a little too rigid,” she said. “Not wanting to change because things were good-enough-for-close.”

But as Bounces readers will know, Keys opened herself up to big changes in recent months, perhaps most significantly her switch to a Yonex racquet after having played with Wilson for the previous 17 years.

Keys, who is still in negotiations with Yonex, noticeably doesn’t yet ever say the word “Yonex” aloud in her press conferences here. But after beating Swiatek, she acknowledged that the racquet in question has “obviously been a huge benefit for me and has brought a lot more to my game.”

Keys’ racquet switch has been huge, but it’s also one example of a larger mindset shift she’s had, coming at a time the 29-year-old acknowledges is one of her last acts on tour:

“I think that the big focus for me this off-season was really just kind of buying into I'll try anything, I'll do anything, I'll be open. I'm open to any and all changes. Let's just really go for it.

“Obviously I'm at the later point of my career. It just kind of felt like: Why not— however many more years I have—be willing to adapt and be a little bit more open to change?

“I think doing that is a little bit freeing because I think for a really long time I felt like I was so close doing it a certain way. I kind of just kept falling short. But in my head it was, If I just keep doing it that way, maybe it will happen..

“I think [I’m] just really buying into: Let's just go for it and be open to change. Doing that, I think I kind of pushed myself to figure out kind of what I actually wanted. I think for a long time I just picked up a racquet and said, ‘This is great,’ and moved on.

“I think [now] there was kind of trying things and actually saying, Do I like them? Do I not like them? It just gave me a better insight on what I actually like and what I wanted to do. I think that kind of built a little bit more self-trust.”

Keys also acknowledged that her final opponent at this Australian Open—coincidentally the same woman who had handed her one of the most painful losses of her career—has become a template for the sort of bravery she wants to have on court, despite being three years younger than her.

“Her ability to kind of always go for it, no matter what the score is, is really impressive,” Keys said of Aryna Sabalenka, who beat Paula Badosa 6-4, 6-2 in the first semifinal. “I mean, she plays such fearless tennis. She has the ability to play so well that way. I think it's very unique. I think a lot of people, no matter what, even if it was a tight point, you kind of expect them to play a little bit more conservative or back down a little bit—and you know she's not going to do that….the one thing I really wanted to try to be better at was not playing more passive in big points and really, honestly, just trying to emulate the way she trusts her game and the way she goes after it. I think if you're able to do that and you miss and you lose, but it's on your terms, it's a little bit easier to swallow than if you're kind of playing a little bit passive and things don't go the way that you want them to anyways.”

Keys has a 1-4 record against Sabalenka, but if she can keep her W.W.A.D. (What Would Aryna Do?) mindset in play when across the net from her inspiration, that same warm, loose, freedom she had on Thursday night could carry her through.

“I think that I've been doing a lot of personal work with all of that,” Keys said of her desire to go for it, Sabalenka-style. “I think one of the big things: after I lost to Aryna at the U.S. Open, I felt like I tried to play safe, and I wasn't playing how I wanted to in the big moments. That felt so bad.

“I just felt like if I can go out and do what I want to do—and really just, again, be uncomfortable at times and just actually go for it and continue to play the way I play my best tennis—and I lose, then I can walk away and say: ‘OK. I did my best, she beat me, that's fine.’ I didn't want to be in the same situation where I kind of looked back at it and thought, Man, I should have gone for it. I didn't want to have any regrets for not really laying it all out there.”

Swiatek, who had never before lost a match on tour-level after holding match point, opened her own press conference on Thursday night by recognizing that Keys’ courage had been decisive in a razor-thin match.

“I guess at the end Madison, like, was kind of brave with her decisions,” Swiatek said. “And she pushed me when she needed to.”

Afterthoughts

Sabalenka, who will hang onto the No. 1 ranking after this tournament thanks to Swiatek’s loss in the semifinals, will be in her third straight Australian Open final and her fifth major final overall, all of which have come on hardcourts.

Keys only has one major final to draw on, and it was a quick one: a lopsided 6-3, 6-0 loss to her friend Sloane Stephens at the 2017 U.S. Open.

“I've obviously thought of that match endlessly for the past eight years,” Keys said, playfully annoyed but understanding of the need to rehash another one of her most painful past defeats for context on one of the happiest nights of her life.

“I think during that match, I was so consumed with being nervous and the moment and the opportunity and all of that, that I never really gave myself a chance to actually play,” Keys said of losing to Stephens.

But Keys said that she’s learned that getting nervous shouldn’t be seen as something to avoid.

“In the past, in my head, the people who play amazing in the tight moments, they either don't have nerves or they figure out how to get rid of them— instead of being able to play tennis with them,” Keys said. “I think the big thing for me has just been knowing that there are going to be a lot of moments where I'm uncomfortable in the match. It's going to be stressful: you have thousands of people watching you; you might not be playing your best tennis. But instead of trying to shy away from that and search for settling or comfort or anything, just being OK that that's the situation—and you can also play tennis through that. I think is something that I've been working really hard on.

“I think that's probably one of the biggest lessons that I can take from that U.S. Open final: just be okay with knowing that I'm probably going to be uncomfortable 99 percent of the time that I'm on the court. And that's OK. And I can still also play tennis through that.”

A Note on American Women in Major Finals

As those who have been following Bounces through the Australian Open will know—and thanks to all who have subscribed within the last few days and weeks!—early in the tournament I discussed the “LAMP” statistic showing how deep the Last American Man Playing gets at each major:

Taylor Fritz, Torchbearer

Ben Shelton is the LAMP for this Australian Open, incidentally, and he’s still in this tournament (albeit as a huge underdog to Jannik Sinner in the semifinals).

But with Keys into a final I thought I should end this dispatch with a nod to American women’s comprehensive comparative superiority at going all the way at majors…or at least almost all the way, even after the Williams Sisters were no longer at the peak of their powers.

Keys’ one previous major final, that loss to Stephens at the 2017 U.S. Open, was the most recent all-American major final; it was actually the second all-American final of that season, following Serena beating Venus in Melbourne.

Since then, American women have been pretty reliable at reaching major finals, with eight different women now combining for thirteen appearances.

But while American women have been great at getting to the final hurdle, clearing it hasn’t been easy: in their twelve most recent major finals, American women have gone an unideal 2-10.

Champions in BOLD ALL CAPS

Is there something systemic that’s leading to so much more silver than gold for American women? Tough to say, but I’m open to theories if anyone has them.

Regardless of how Saturday goes for Keys, the depth at the top is something American women’s tennis probably hasn’t gotten nearly enough credit for in recent years; that Keys wasn’t even on this window of the grid until tonight shows just how deep the bench has been.

But if Sabalenka wins her fourth major on Saturday, Belarus will have twice as many major titles as the United States over this time frame, which is also quite a feat for a country of only 9 million whose name we aren’t supposed to say anymore in tennis.

Thanks for reading Bounces! Please do subscribe to keep up with all the fun stuff here through the end of the Australian Open and beyond! -Ben

1. Here’s a link to how his Keys W turned out, buried here in case someone might consider a hyperlink above more of a spoiler.