The striking power behind Madison's keys
The 29-year-old's Australian Open victory was major win for the therapy girlies.
There have been so many huge news stories in women’s sports over the past few days, and I promise I will get to them all. But the past few days, my head and heart haven’t been able to stop replaying the scenes from Saturday morning in the United States — which, because the world is round and time is a construct, happened to be late Saturday night in Melbourne, Australia — when 29-year-old American Madison Keys hit a stunning inside out forehand winner to defeat two-time defending champion and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 to win the Australian Open and capture the maiden Grand Slam title of her career.
It was, my friends, a MOMENT.
I don’t think it’s accurate to call Keys a late bloomer; she has been considered the future of women’s tennis since her pre-teens. She turned pro on her 14th birthday, and won her first WTA match just 45 days later. She won her first U.S. Open match when she was 16 years old, entered the top 100 when she was 17, and had her first top-10 win at 18, defeating No. 6 Li Na at the Madrid Open. She made her first major semifinal at the Australian Open when she was only 19 years old by upsetting No. 4 Petra Kvitova in the third round and No. 18 Venus Williams in the quarterfinals. After she fell to No. 1 Serena Williams in the semifinals, Serena said, “It was an honor for me to play someone who will be No. 1 in the future.” Two years later, she reached her first major final at the 2017 U.S. Open.
When I think of a late bloomer, I think much more of someone like Jasmine Paolini, who hit her way from obscurity to relevancy in her late 20s, surprising everyone in the tennis establishment, even herself.
There was, until Saturday, a much more demeaning moniker attached to Keys: Under achiever. From the outside, it appeared she had all the resources, the power, the talent, and the hype needed to be one of the greats. But there she lingered, a steady presence in the top 20 for a decade — an admirable achievement that many former tennis prodigies never sniff, but hardly a bastion of fulfilled promise. In normie terms, she was the kid who grew up in academically gifted programs, earned a yearbook superlative or two, went to a good college, and yet found themselves a decade or two after graduation surviving, but nowhere close to thriving. (Not that I would know anything about this.)
Now look. I am about as far from a professional athlete as one can be; I’m three weeks into a beginner’s running program that hasn’t required slowly jogging for more than one minute at a time yet, and it has been a *challenge* to make it this far. But I am someone who is really trying to make more of her life, who feels that weight of untapped “potential,” who believes in therapy and working hard on your mental health as a means of improving your lot in life. I am someone who has, as a result of both my own shortcomings and outside circumstances, felt like I’ve been treading water, something that (famously!) takes a lot of energy, for a decade now. I am someone who wants to change my narrative.
And I feel like Madison Keys both showed and told me exactly how to do it.
Keys’ press conferences after her semifinal win over Iga Swiatek and her championship victory over Sabalenka were masterclasses in self reflection. She wasn’t hiding behind a wall of platitudes, the way so may athletes do; she was simply sharing her truth. And it bowled me over.
Here was a woman at the peak of her career talking, in detail, about how working on her mental health allowed her to reach for her best tennis when it mattered the most. Here was a champion advocating, strongly and directly and specifically, for talk therapy. Not sports psychology — though that definitely has its place. But real, true, therapy.
“I think in the past I had done it before, but it had always been I think too sports-specific,” Keys said. “I kind of always went in with the thought of, Will this help me perform better? I finally got to the point where I was personally low enough that I was like, I don't really care if this helps me perform, I just want to feel better. I think doing that, it was just kind of that moment where it was like, I don't really care what I have to do, I just want to feel better.”
She just wanted to feel better. How relatable is that? How many of us have been there, or maybe even are there right now?
“I think that everyone should be in therapy, no matter what,” Keys continued. “I think it helps. I think no matter what, no matter what's going on in your life, you're going to have moments where things are tough and you need someone to talk to. I think it's very important. It's something I will continue to do for the rest of my life. I think if more people do it and more people talk about it, then it just kind of becomes the norm.”
As I mentioned above, I’ve been in therapy. In fact, I’ve been in and out of therapy for 25 years, with many long breaks primarily due to insurance and financial woes. I’ve been with my current therapist for 13 months, and I’m making progress dealing with my severe depression, anxiety, ADHD, and trauma, but it’s an intense, sometimes excruciatingly slow process.
Because of that, none of the concepts that Keys talked about in her press conferences were new to me. But the way she explained how they impacted her life deeply moved me, as did her authenticity and vulnerability.
I am not one to buy into toxic positivity; I do not believe that everyone can do anything they set their mind to, that we’re all just one self-help book or podcast away from success. Systemic inequities exist. Luck always plays a factor in success. There is so much that isn’t in our control. But Keys reminded me that change is possible, and I think it’s worth diving deeper into how she turned untapped potential into a trophy presentation.1
If you want to change the outcome, change the process
They say that the definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (If you are playing a twisted drinking game and taking a shot every time I write a cliche in this newsletter, my apologies for the liver damage.) But I think that’s a bit dramatic. These repetitive patterns, which often lead to ruts, are extremely hard to recognize when you’re in them, and even harder to pull yourself out of. Change is difficult!
Keys had a successful career; she was getting close to a breakthrough, over and over again, for decades. So she kept training the same way, kept using the same equipment, kept staying the course. Until last year, when she reached a low point after getting injured and being forced to retire at 5-5 in the third set in an absolutely epic fourth-round match against Paolini at Wimbledon.
She re-evaluated things. And, with the help of her husband and coach, former ATP player Bjorn Fratangelo, she decided that it was time to do things differently. Over the next six months, she changed her racket, her strings, her service motion, and even her offseason travel schedule.
After beating Swiatek in the semifinals, she discussed what led to those changes, emphasis mine:
Q. You spoke earlier about trusting your work and trusting that will pay off. At what point in your career did you come to that conclusion? Was there ever a point when you did focus too much on doubts and you were in your head too much?
MADISON KEYS: I think there's been moments in my career when things kind of just felt like they were kind of happening and things were easy, and you just kind of run with that momentum.
I think that's kind of the reality of the sport. It's really hard to just be on a high every single week. I think it's the times when things aren't going your way that it's pretty easy for doubt to kind of creep in.
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 started putting a lot of pressure on myself within that, and I probably just got a little too rigid not wanting to change because things were good enough for close and all that.
I think 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 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.
Sometimes we do things a certain way just because that’s how we’ve always done it. Mixing things up might make things worse; but it might also be the only way to make them better.
Feel the fear and do it anyway
Keys is known for her power. It’s what sets her apart from her peers, why she was able to achieve so much at a relatively young age, why she has remained in the top 20 for all these years. But it’s also been, at times, what’s held her back. Because unleashing that power can be risky; there’s nothing safe about Keys’ game when its at its best.
One of the matches that Keys was most known for prior to this season was her semifinal loss to Sabalenka at the 2023 U.S. Open. Keys led that match 6-0, 5-3, 0-15. She served for it at 6-0, 5-4, and then she again led 4-2 in the third set. But every single time she got within a few points of victory, she tightened up, and her power became her kryptonite. She lost the match in heartbreaking fashion, 0-6, 7-6 (1), 7-6 (10-5).
After the Swiatek victory, she talked about how her instinct, both in that 2023 match and afterwards, was to play it safe in the big moments. But she learned that the bigger the moment, the braver she had to be.
Q. Do you feel as though you're playing with house money a little bit just because, like last week you were saying, Oh, I'm 30, I'm ripping up my game, I'm doing all these things differently, I'm willing to take the risks to go all in. Today in the match, even in the tight moments, you were laughing, at times smiling. We didn't normally see that body language for you before in tight moments in the past. Is the mindset more like that, like let's just see how we go as opposed to matches are life and death?
MADISON KEYS: I think that I've been doing a lot of personal work with all of that. I think one of the big things, after I lost to Aryna at the US 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, Okay, 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.
So that was kind of just my whole goal today was that no matter what, win or lose, I walked away and said that I did what I wanted to do, I followed the game plan, I went for things when I should have gone for things.
I think that it was a little bit more freeing and I was able to kind of just take in the moment a little bit better and stay a little bit more present instead of getting too wrapped into the emotional turmoil of I should have done this, I should have done that, and just having a lot of regret.
Our impulse can be to shrink under the spotlight, to try and just not mess things up. But when times are the toughest, when the stakes are the highest, that’s when we need to be our boldest.
Seriously, get comfortable being uncomfortable
This is a concept Keys kept coming back to time and time again, and it’s so important that I decided to highlight it twice, albeit under slightly differently-sloganed subhed!
Other than that Sabalenka loss in New York, many associated Keys with another loss on Arthur Ashe stadium: Her no-show in the 2017 U.S. Open final against Sloane Stephens, which she lost 6-3, 6-0. When asked about that match ahead of this Australian Open final, Keys opened up about how she’d learned to work with the nerves, not against them.
Q. Back eight years ago against Sloane in New York, how much have you either watched that match, thought about it? Are there ways in which that experience can be a benefit and help you take on Saturday?
MADISON KEYS: Yeah, I mean, I've obviously thought of that match endlessly for the past eight years (smiling).
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.
I think that I've done a lot of work trying to not get rid of nerves because I think in the past in my head it was kind of always 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.
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 okay 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 US Open final and just be okay with knowing that I'm probably going to be uncomfortable 99% of the time that I'm on the court, and that's okay, and I can still also play tennis through that.
Everything in my life is much, much more low stakes than a Grand Slam tennis final. But I’ve only recently realized how much of my life is spent avoiding discomfort. I’ve often wondered myself whether other writers and reporters just have magical genes that make them confident and secure in everything they write and publish, at ease while asking tough questions and sending out blind inquiries, and completely self-assured and at home promoting themselves and their own work. And I bet some of them do! But it’s much more likely that others in this industry are just better at pushing through those feelings than I am. Rather than putting energy towards hiding from discomfort, I’m going to keep working on sitting with discomfort, and doing what needs to be done anyways.
And last but not least …
Separate your self worth from your accomplishments
As much as I love everything Keys said in press, the most crucial revelation she provided was that she had decided in the past year that if she never won a major title, she would be okay.
Q. I know you have nothing to compare it to, but where you sit now, given this journey that you've been on in order to get here, can you reflect at all about how it feels having gone through all that and to get to the top of the mountain this way rather than maybe if it had happened eight years ago? I'm curious, the classic idea of does it make it all worthwhile?
MADISON KEYS: I think everything kind of happens for a reason. I think for me specifically, I kind of had to go through some tough things. I think it just kind of forced me to look at myself in the mirror a little bit and try to work on, like, kind of just internal pressure that I was putting on myself. I felt like from a pretty young age, I felt like if I never won a Grand Slam, then I wouldn't have lived up to what people thought I should have been. That was a pretty heavy burden to kind of carry around.
So I finally got to the point where I was proud of myself and proud of my career, with or without a Grand Slam. I finally got to the point where I was okay if it didn't happen. I didn't need it to feel like I had a good career or that I deserved to be talked about as a great tennis player.
I feel like finally letting go of that kind of internal talk that I had just gave me the ability to actually go out and play some really good tennis to actually win a Grand Slam.
Accepting ourselves and loving ourselves regardless of whether we reach our goals is not giving up!! This is a concept that I always have a hard time grasping, and I needed this reminder desperately.
Thank you, Madi. And if you need a ghost writer for the self-help book you should absolutely write, my email address is available in too many places to name. Let’s talk.
(I promise to bring snark to the newsletter later this week to help make up for all the sincerity. Love you all!!)
Actual results may vary.
really feeling your comment "I am someone who wants to change my narrative." we all can. its doing it that's the hardest part. <3