Madison Keys Returns to Charleston a Grand Slam Champion

AUSTRALIAN OPEN CHAMPION OPENS UP ON LETTING GO

The Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup makes for one unwieldy seatmate. The silver trophy, awarded each year since 1934 to the women’s singles titlist at the Australian Open, measures some 20 inches in height and tips the scale at 22 pounds.

Not your typical carry-on.

But Madison Keys was more than happy to have ‘Daph’ as a travel companion in January during her more than 20-hour journey back from Melbourne to her home in Orlando, Fla. She had waited long enough for one of tennis’ four most prized trophies, after all. More than a decade-and-a-half, in fact. Once burdened by the weighty expectations she began shouldering at age 14, when Sports Illustrated pegged her as the next Sure Thing, Keys was now embracing the load.     

“It made it on multiple flights in one piece, so that was good,” laughed Keys, now 30, in Indian Wells. “It’s very large, so it’s currently just sitting in our guest bedroom until we have a proper space for it.”

It’s been a busy, life-altering four months for Keys. In November, she married her longtime partner and coach, former ATP pro Bjorn Fratangelo, in an intimate ceremony along the Kiawah River in Charleston. In lieu of a honeymoon, the newlyweds soon headed Down Under, where Keys proceeded to go on a tear on the tennis court. After beginning the year with a quarterfinal finish at the ASB Classic in Auckland, she captured a WTA 500 title in Adelaide, defeating her wedding guest Jessica Pegula in the all-American final, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1.

Then came her run in Melbourne Park. Keys had reached a major singles final once before, of course, having fallen to pal/countrywoman Sloane Stephens at the US Open in 2017. But this time she would go the distance, taking out four Top-10 opponents in the process, including world No. 1 and two-time defending AO champion Aryna Sabalenka in the title match, 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.

Including a semifinal run in Indian Wells, she would win 16 straight matches. A streak like that can do wonders for your confidence. But with Keys again striking the ball with authority, dictating from the baseline and back inside the Top 5 in the PIF WTA Rankings, she would credit her resurgence to a newfound ability to jettison her ever-mounting internal pressure.

We caught up with the reigning Australian Open champ before her return to the Credit One Charleston Open, where the 2019 titlist will join a deep field featuring the likes of Pegula, Emma Navarro, Zheng Qinwen, Jelena Ostapenko and Sofia Kenin. An exclusive interview:

What will it be like to come back to Charleston, where just four months ago you were getting married? In that time your whole world seems to have changed.

I’m really excited. I was laughing the other day, thinking, “I feel like we were just in Charleston. Why were we just in Charleston? Oh, yeah, our wedding! I forgot!” It feels like it was just yesterday, but also so many things have happened. We’re really excited to come back.

You’ve long said that Charleston ranks as one of your favorite tour stops. What is it about the event that makes you feel so at home?

I think a big part of that is [tournament director] Bob Moran believed in me from a really young age, so I’ve been able to play the tournament many times. I was granted a wildcard a few times when I was still quite young and just starting on the tour. Just being able to come back every single year — I don’t think I’ve missed one. [This will be Keys’ 12th straight appearance.] I love it there. The people are great, the fans are amazing. The people that work the tournament are some of my favorite people I see all year. It just feels very welcoming. Everyone makes it such a unique and special week. Being on the road as much as all of us are, being able to find tournaments that make you feel as welcome and at home, those are the weeks you really look forward to. It helps that it’s a women’s-only event, which I think a lot of us are really happy about. It’s one of our biggest women’s-only tournaments. The fact that it still feels so quaint and relatable, I’ve always loved coming back.     

Last year at the US Open you said about your busy life: “I wouldn’t recommend it. Planning a wedding, renovating a house and traveling together full-time while having to be in Airbnbs, in hotels, maybe don’t do all three of those things at the same time.” Yet you somehow seem to have pulled it all off with aplomb.

I still would say I don’t recommend it (Laughs]. It’s pretty chaotic to do all of the ‘big life things’ at the same time. But we had a nice off-season. It was really fun to take some extra time. I ended my year a bit early. The way we structured it was to have it in two parts. The break in the middle was for our wedding. It made the offseason fly by. It was really enjoyable. It definitely helped that we had a house to come back to that was done. Then we had a really successful Australian Open, being able to do that together. Not very many people get to say they got to do that with their significant other.

No honeymoon?

We haven’t really had time to take one. We’ll pencil that in eventually.

What has Bjorn brought to your life both on and away from the court?

The one thing I think everybody sees is that he’s obviously an amazing tennis player. Just being able to practice whenever I need him to hop on the other side of the net is always really beneficial. He’s so good at being able to change things up, like if I’m dealing with someone who’s hitting a little bit harder, or it’s someone who has a really great slice. He can do any and all of it. On the game side of things, he’s one of the smartest tennis brains that I’ve ever spoken to. He loves the game. Sometimes I come home and he’s on YouTube watching someone from 15 years ago hit a ball. He’s like, “Ah, man, that’s the best backhand I’ve ever seen.” [Laughs.] “Okay, cool, I don’t know why that’s what we’re doing.” The other day, I think it came up on his Instagram: He’s like, “Man, [David] Nalbandian, best backhand I’ve ever seen.” Then it went into a whole conversation about so many different things. I think not only having that kind of tennis brain, but a love for the sport, it creates a lot of opportunities to talk through things, which has made me a little bit more curious about tennis as an overall game, instead of just thinking about how I need to go out and do my job today. And being able to talk through things and have someone who knows me so well and knows how to communicate certain things to me in a way I’m actually going to be able to understand them is the cherry on top.     

I was so struck by what you said in the wake of your Aussie Open win: That you had finally embraced the pressure and anxiety that comes with this sport, and that you were okay with who you were even if you had never won a major singles title.

The funny thing about this sport is that it is a constant, something that I’m probably always going to have to be conscious about and be thinking about day to day. Everything has such small margins. If you don’t have the right outlook that day, that can be the difference. But through the Aussie swing, I had really come to a place where I finally felt like I was happy with my career. Not to say that I didn’t want more or didn’t still have big goals, but it was no longer this overwhelming kind of feeling of not being good enough and not measuring up. It really got to the point where I said to myself, “If it doesn’t happen, that’s fine. I’ve still had a really great career. There is still plenty of opportunity for me to continue to play well, to do really well at tournaments.” I was able to take my mind off of the importance of winning. I know that’s kind of crazy to say, because our job is wrapped up in that. But that doesn’t really work for me. I have to be conscious about making sure I’m thinking about the process and trying to get better, looking for the small wins along the way. I was able to do that for three weeks.     

You have been an advocate for therapy, yet in some ways it seems you came to some of those realizations on your own. Is that how you see it?

No, not really. [Laughs.] It was many, many hours talking through a lot of things. It was not something that happened overnight. It was something that took a lot of conscious effort and talking through. I was just trying to be really honest with myself about where I was at mentally. I had definitely gotten to the point where I needed to talk to someone, that I needed a little bit of extra help. It was definitely not something that I woke up and realized: “Okay, I did it!”

Players in this article

Madison Keys