KEY BISCAYNE, Fla.—“Be patient, be patient, be patient!”

That's what Madison Keys’ coach, Jesse Levine, kept telling her during her quarterfinal against Angelique Kerber here on Wednesday. He said it when he visited her on a changeover, and he barked it again between points. It was the right advice, of course; im-patience has never been a winning trait, in tennis or any other walk of life. And Keys, despite her famously itchy trigger finger, appeared to agree: Whenever Levine brought the word up, she nodded along.

The only problem was, by my calculation, Keys successfully took his advice just one time: Down 3-6, 1-4 and falling fast to Kerber, Keys finally eased off on the trigger, went for depth rather than all-out pace, moved the ball from corner to corner with plenty of clearance over the net and won the point. It was obviously too little too late: Shortly after, Keys—thoroughly frustrated by Kerber’s impenetrable defense— missed a volley and sent her racquet flying into the net after it.

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This had been a highly-anticipated matchup. Keys and Kerber had split their previous two meetings: Both had been entertaining see-saw finals that ended 7-5 in the third—Keys beat Kerber in 2014 to win Eastbourne on grass; Kerber beat Keys last year to win Charleston on clay. A slow hard court in Miami seemed the perfect venue for the rubber match. Through six games, there was still no reason to believe otherwise: Keys broke early with a series of vicious winners, then gave the break back with a series of equally vicious errors. But birdies and bogies were all just par for the course with these two.

Then Keys started missing, and couldn’t stop. She reached break point at 3-3, dropped a backhand return on a second serve limply into the net and never recovered. At 3-4, she put a forehand into the net and was broken. Soon after, she put another forehand even farther down into the net and was broken again. Keys opened the second set by missing a forehand by 10 feet. Someone in the crowd, exasperated, yelled, “Come on!

It didn’t help: Keys missed when she was pushed out of position, and she missed because her feet weren’t set; then she started to miss even when she was fully set. She ended up making 39 unforced errors and winning just 43 points. Levine didn’t visit in the second set; it was too late for patience. Kerber did a nice job of keeping the ball deep, swinging her serve wide and hitting with pace when necessary, but that’s about all she needed to do.

In some ways, Keys reminds me of David Nalbandian. Like him, she is virtually unbeatable when she’s on her front foot, stepping into the ball and hitting it in her strike zone from an offensive position. When she connects on a forehand from there, your eyes go to the radar gun; she can make a ground stroke look and sound like it’s just flown past you at 150 m.p.h. But also like Nalbandian, Keys struggles mightily when she’s pushed back or moved to the side, or otherwise made to take the ball from an uncomfortable spot. She’s not an agile defender, and on Wednesday night she was caught out of position and a step slow on what should have been regulation rally balls. In Australia, Lindsay Davenport, Keys’ former coach, talked often about how critical her serve is for her success, and after Wednesday night it was easy to see why. If she doesn’t use it to get an immediate advantage in a point, she can quickly find herself in trouble.

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Keys began this tournament with Mats Wilander in her corner, but she announced on Tuesday that she won’t be working with him anymore. How might he have helped? Keys, appearances sometimes to the contrary, can do more than just go for broke. She can rally, she can work the ball around, she can construct points. But to do it, her footwork needs to be much sharper than it was on Wednesday.

“It was a really bad night,” Keys said.

There wasn’t much else to say. Bad nights happen, and Keys will have much better ones, possibly on a faster surface this summer. But she was also the last U.S. player in either singles draw at this major U.S. event. With some past exceptions—Chris Evert, Tracy Austin—the American game has traditionally been, like Keys' own game, a preemptive one, born on fast hard courts and played by kids who also throw baseballs and footballs: In this country, if you can’t win the point with an ace, you win it with a killer forehand. Errors are tolerated because they're the natural outgrowth of trying for winners.

During the 20th century, that style worked better than any other. In the 21st, though, the European game—born on clay and played by kids who also play soccer and have learned to create with their feet—has come to the fore. It's a game where errors aren't tolerated, and where consistency is the foundation. In many ways, that’s Kerber’s game; where Keys wins with her arms, Kerber wins with her feet. In this era of the baseliner, where the return is as important as the serve and a good defense is as lethal as a good offense, the feet win every time.

It’s a game that, as Levine and Keys both know, calls for a little—OK, a lot—more patience. Is it something that Americans still have?

Images from Anita Aguilar/TENNIS.com