Bill Simons
In 1993, after Wimbledon finalist Jana Novotna suffered the most humbling choke in Grand Slam history, Simon Barnes suggested the Czech had just “played a game of tennis for everyone who has ever made an absolutely ghastly mistake. Or, to put it another way, for the entire human race.”
The same can’t really be said about Madison Keys’s devastating flat-tire performance in the 2017 US Open finals. But her dismal loss to her friend Sloane Stephens left a deep, long-lasting scar.
Keys’s fans knew of her phenomenal rise that began when, at four, she fell in love with a dress Venus Williams was wearing at Wimbledon.
At ten, the Rock Island, Illinois kid convinced her entire family to move to Florida just to advance her tennis. When she was 11, people said she’d be a Grand Slam champ. At 14, she won her first WTA match, she scored an early win over Serena and, at the 2019 Australian Open, she reached the semifinals. At the French Open, her groundstrokes proved to be faster than any other man’s or woman’s in Paris.
Maddy would win a lot of tournaments and a vault full of money. But, after her 2017 debacle, there were even more teary defeats on big stages.
All the while, experts insisted she could just ignore all the pressure and play with tunnel vision. But she recalled, “When nerves came up, it started an internal panic.”
After a heartbreaking 2023 loss to Aryna Sabalenka in the semis of the US Open, Keys broke down in her press conference. The sorrow was painful.
Last July, when she was just two points from a Wimbledon win over Jasmine Paolini, a hamstring injury denied her the victory.
Still, she soldiered on. She confided that the key was “lots of therapy…I bought into it and started to dig in about how I felt about myself. It was really hard being honest and [it was] very uncomfortable… I think everyone should be in therapy no matter what. It should be the norm…It’s overwhelmingly needed.”
Maddy recalled that last year, “It was like a light bulb moment. I can be nervous and play great tennis – those two things can live together.” Keys came to understand that she shouldn’t define herself by wins or losses, and realized she was okay with herself – even if she didn’t live up to others’ expectations: “Finally letting go of all that internal talk gave me the ability to actually win a Grand Slam.”
In the past, at crunch time she’d felt disconnected. “I couldn’t connect my brain and body…[But] last year I became more clear-headed and better at problem solving.”
Plus, Keys fell in love with a tennis wizard, former pro Bjorn Fratangelo, who became her coach and husband. This year in Australia she went on an 11-match win streak. Her confidence soared, and she often seemed buoyant. She was only the No. 19 seed, but she mowed down No. 10 Danielle Collins, No. 6 Elena Rybakina and No. 29 Elina Svitolina. Then she won in an epic semifinal against the No. 2 seed Iga Swiatek. “It was a hurdle,” Madison said. “I thought: I can absolutely win on Saturday.”
Stats experts noted that the eight-year gap between her appearances in Slam finals was the longest of any woman in history.
Along with Collins, Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula, Sofia Kenin and Jen Brady, the sixth American Grand Slam finalist of the decade was a hefty underdog against the No. 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka. She’d lost four of the five matches they’d played. Still, analysts dared to imagine. Prakash Amritraj said, “Sometimes when things go for you, everything just starts to flow.” Jon Wertheim added, “There just seems to be something in the tennis universe.”
The tennis gods seemed to agree. In stark contrast to her 2017 US Open final, Keys came on Laver Arena with belief and unleashed mighty, deep groundies and took the opening set 6-4.
Keys is blessed with such power, such athleticism. But struggle is in her tennis DNA. Few others run so hot – or so cold. Free-flowing ease isn’t her strength.
Plus, she was playing a foe who was also on an 11-match winning streak and was, with Naomi Osaka, the most imposing hard court player since Serena.
There’s good reason why Aryna is No. 1 and was seeking to be the first woman to win three straight AOs since Martina Hingis in 1997-1999.
Sabalenka didn’t grow up in the shadow of an elegant country club – and she’s not from a hotbed of tennis. She only started to play when she and her dad were out for a Sunday drive and they bumped into a public court. They said, “Hey, let’s try that game.”
When she was a kid, her short-sighted coaches insisted she was too stupid to be an elite pro. But, like Keys, Aryna’s journey would inspire. Her beloved 43-year-old father Sergey lost his battle to meningitis in 2019, and still, to this day, Aryna plays for him.
And just a few years ago, she suffered a shocking case of the yips like no other star ever had. Never mind that she was then No. 2 in the world – in just four matches she endured 56 double faults. But eventually, as her co-coach Jason Stacy observed, “She hit her fear and went through it, face on.”
Then the giggly Belarusian Holly Golighty was thrust into a nasty political tangle when her nation became Putin’s prime ally in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And last year her former boyfriend of nearly three years jumped to his death from a Miami highrise.
Still, to her great credit, in recent seasons Sabalenka has evolved from one of the tour’s most fragile players to one of its toughest warriors.
So, not surprisingly, in tonight’s final, Sabalenka turned the match around as she ran Madison to the corners and attacked her serve en route to a 6-2 second-set win.
Let’s be honest: women’s Slam finals too often are forgettable routs. But tonight’s final sizzled in the deciding third set as the two powerhouses punched and counter-punched like the mighty, caution-be-damned, heavyweights they are. Both players unleashed forehands close to the lines. Their serves didn’t waver, their nerves held steady.
The match became the first women’s Slam final to go to 5-5 in the third since 2013. But Maddy had one advantage. In the final set, she served first, and knew if she held serve, Aryna would inevitably feel the pressure. Maybe she’d blink.
But when Keys, with steely nerves, won her sixth service game in a row to go up 6-5, she didn’t wait for Aryna to falter.
We know sports is all about grace under pressure and executing at crunch time.
Keys did.
In one of the boldest games we can recall, Keys bravely blasted an imposing return of serve and was just three points from victory. Never mind that in the semis she’d been down a match point to Swiatek. Now all the pain of inexplicable losses and hobbling injuries were far from her mind.
Yes, Keys’s husband’s face was flooded with anxiety. Sabalenka grimaced, and a nervous hush descended on one of tennis’ great arenas.
Still, Keys, playing in her 46th major, seemed oddly calm and steady. She blasted yet another forehand to gain two championship points.
But Sabalenka, the fighter who’s known for her Tiger tattoo, growled, and let go with a defiant service winner: “I will not surrender this crown!”
Maddy didn’t care. She didn’t blink. She told herself, “Go for it – lay it all on the line.” And then, on her second championship point, she hit the sweetest shot of her 15-year career, an unafraid, laser-like, inside-out forehand winner for the ages, that secured her dream win, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.
“It’s a second coming for Maddy,” observed AO Radio. “She had the moment on her racket and she went for it. This was a full throttle victory…She made it happen. She’ll remember that winner forever…It’s been a long time between drinks.”
Somehow, Simon Barnes’s long-ago comment came to mind. He said a tennis star had “played a game of tennis for everyone…or, to put it another way, for the entire human race.”
But, in fact, Keys won for a little girl who fell in love with a tennis dress, a ten-year old who went all the way to Florida to gain glory, a battler who suffered one of the most wretched of all New York losses.
Maddy won it for her American tennis pals. She and three other American women are now in the WTA’s Top Ten. She won it for her coach and lover. And, most of all, she won it for a resilient 29-year-old warrior who kissed the sky and then referred to all the therapy she’d done and informed ESPN that she won because she’d “done a lot of work to not need this title.”
