Madison Keys and her inspirational 16-year journey through professional tennis

Madison Keys, already up a break, had Belinda Bencic pinned at deuce on Thursday in their Indian Wells quarterfinal. Bencic served down the T, and Keys threw her whole body into the backhand return, forcing Bencic to pluck the ball off her baseline with an awkward, looping half volley. Having moved up, Keys clobbered an inside-out forehand winner.

Bencic turned to her coaching box with a knowing look, adding a subtle but eloquent shrug: “What’s a woman supposed to do with that?”

“Take it on the chin” is the obvious answer to almost all the women who have been posing that question to Keys these days. The 30-year old Australian Open champion improved her 2025 record to 18-1 with her 6-1, 6-1 demolition of fellow 17-match winner Bencic in barely over an hour.

Keys still found time to pound out 30 winners over that period.

It’s been fascinating to watch Keys this year in the same way that it’s compelling–and borderline inspirational–to see the triumph of any athlete whose use-by date appeared to be expired. But to really savor what Keys has been about these days, it’s helpful to harken back to the lovely, early fall evening of Sept. 9, 2017, when Keys–just 22 at the time–played Sloane Stephens in the US Open women’s singles final.

That tournament was a great celebration of American tennis, with Coco Vandeweghe and Venus Williams joining 24-year-old Stephens and Keys in semifinals that ultimately produced the brace of newbie Grand Slam finalists. But the championship match ended on a lingering note of pathos. Unable to control her nerves, Keys misplaced her game and won just three games as Stephens, a close friend, won in a 61-minute, 6-3, 6-0, rout.

The match left us with two enduring images: the women in a tight embrace at the net after the final point, with Stephens consoling her weeping friend. And, a few minutes later, the pair sitting side-by-side awaiting the trophy presentation, chatting and joking like school girls with towels covering their mouths to ward off lip readers – and cameras.

In his match report in the New York Times, ace tennis writer Christopher Clarey wrote: “She (Stephens) prevailed convincingly in a duel that has a chance to be replayed on the game’s big stages in the years to come.”

Alas, that was not to be.

The closest they would come was a 2019 semifinal at Roland Garros. Stephens won, to reach her second major final, but she lost that one. She hasn’t been past the quarterfinals at a major since. Keys had an even tougher time. Despite four ensuing semifinal chances, she never made it to the trophy round again until her recent triumph at the Australian Open.

Keys leans into the vernacular to describe her career as a “journey,” and in her case using the word isn’t bombastic. Hers is a trip that began with enormous promise and widespread hype: she was an Australian Open semifinalist in 2015, at 19. But the loss in New York just two-plus years later was a gut punch.

In the ensuing years, Keys – while injured off and on – managed to remain in the conversation at the top of the game. But that discussion increasingly revolved around a theme that was threatening to become a career-defining one: Keys’ inability to win the big one. Sometimes even the not-so-big one, as she often fought a losing battle with her nerves. People began to write her off as a threat to win majors.

At the same time, Keys' sunny disposition helped make her popular in the locker room as well as among the general public. Everyone loved “Maddie,” who in 2020 launched the anti-bullying Kindness Wins foundation, which is dedicated to promoting “kindness to youth, kindness to self, and kindness to others in times of struggle.”

As an athlete, Madison Keys was all familiar with the sense of being bullied, at least on the court. Her struggle to feel that she belonged among the elites was a long one.

In making the final of the Australian Open, Keys logged the longest gap between a player’s first and second appearance in a Grand Slam final. Looking back over the years in a pre-Indian Wells meeting with reporters, Keys explained that all that time she had just assumed that top players who won major events were different because they had the ability to “turn off” the nerves, effectively neutralizing them.

“I don't know why I had that thought,” she said. “Or where I got that from, but that's just kind of how I thought things went. So for me, when nerves would finally start happening, it was an immediate kind of panic of, well, now I'm not going to be able to play well because people can't win with these feelings.”

But Keys never capitulated to a role as the really nice girl who cared about bullying and confused youth but couldn’t really stick that big kicker when it really mattered. She wanted to get to the bottom of her tendency to choke, but also to gain a better understanding of her essential self. Many pros consult with sports psychologists. Keys, though, chose to work with generalists.

“It took talking through things to finally figure it out, and then just a lot of work,” Keys said. Although her grand-scale success is recent, it has been in the works for some time now. “It's been over a year of working through things and getting more and more comfortable on the court... Even through last year, there were a lot of really tough matches that I was actively trying to work through.”

Key’s marriage to former ATP pro Bjorn Fratangelo in late November seems like a watershed moment in her development. “I think a lot of it was just kind of maturing,” she said of her experience after one of her recent matches. “And [it was] coming to terms with where I was at just as a tennis player.”

Those tough matches haven’t gotten any easier. Ten of her 19 matches this year have gone the three-set distance – and she’s won every one of those.

Read More: Madison Keys has a good grip on reality in managing post-Australian Open expectations

“I think the reality of winning as many matches as I have this early in a season hasn't ever really happened for me [before],” Keys said after her win over Bencic. “So there is definitely a lot of confidence from all those wins under your belt.”

After a long time, Roles have been reversed. It’s time now for opponents of Madison Keys to take it on the chin.