Madison Keys wins her first Grand Slam title at Australian Open by caring a little bit less

How does a player win her first Grand Slam title after coming up short 45 times?

If you’re Madison Keys, you do it by caring a little bit less. You do it by deciding that your life won’t be defined by whether you’ve won one of her sport’s Big 4 events or not.

It’s easy to see why she would care too much. In tennis, the first question anyone asks of a prodigy is, “Can she win a major?” And it doesn’t stop being asked until she either wins one or retires. Keys, who was playing pro events at 15, heard that question early and often.

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“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,” Keys said on Saturday. “That was a pretty heavy burden to kind of carry around.”

“It definitely started pretty young. Probably 11, 12, something like that."

By the time she reached her late 20s, though, she had learned that—contrary to her earlier opinion and contrary to the pressure she felt—she actually wouldn’t feel like a failure if she went Slamless.

“I finally got to the point where I was OK if it didn’t happen,” she said. “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.”

Read More: Madison Keys wins Australian Open in Aryna Sabalenka upset

And what do you think happened next? She went out and, 14 years after her quest began, won her first major, in the most dramatic and well-earned way possible. In the semis and the final, she beat the two top-ranked players in the world, Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka, back to back, 7-6 in the third and 7-5 in the third.

“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,” she said after beating Sabalenka 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.

It was fitting, and maybe a little extra nerve-wracking, that Keys’ biggest win would come against the opponent who had handed her perhaps her most painful defeat. Two years ago at the US Open, she led Sabalenka 6-0, 5-3 in the US Open semifinals, only to lose in a final-set tiebreaker. Keys said it taken a long time to “heal” from that defeat at her home Slam.

Now, with another shot at Sabalenka, she had again blitzed her way to a first-set win, and out-hit the WTA’s other biggest hitter. But the world No. 1, as expected, turned that around in the second set. As the two began to trade holds in the third, Sabalenka looked like the favorite again. She was the one who had been in this position and held her nerve before.

Still, there was a moment that hinted that, this time, things might end differently.

Serving at 1-1 in the third, Keys fell behind 0-30. Sabalenka’s shots were clicking, and she was moving more confidently between points. Keys could easily have been steamrolled in that moment, but she found a way to intervene. At 0-30, she took a step forward and drilled a backhand crosscourt that Sabalenka wasn’t ready to handle. It stopped her momentum cold, and Keys held.

“I just kept telling myself, ‘Be brave, go for it, just kind of lay it all out on the line,’” Keys said. “Kind of at that point, no matter what happens, if I do that, then I can be proud of myself. It just made it a little bit easier.”

A second test came with Keys serving at 5-5, down 15-30. Two more points and Sabalenka would serve for the match. But Keys responded by upping her aggression again. She hit a service winner, a short-hop forehand winner, and another forehand winner that wrong-footed Sabalenka. Now it was Keys who fist-pumping and moving quickly to the changeover.

She would carry that momentum all the way across the finish line. With Sabalenka serving at 5-6, Keys rifled what may have been her cleanest and hardest backhand return of the night for a winner for 0-30. A minute or so later, on her second match point, she stood in the middle of the court with a chance to hammer a final forehand for the title.

Instead of finding the open court, though, Keys pulled up just enough to give Sabalenka a chance to return the ball. Again it landed in the middle of the court, and again Keys had a chance to end it with her forehand. This time she didn’t blink. She sent it inside-out for her 29th winner of the night, and raised her hands to celebrate the win she thought might never come.

“I think everything kind of happens for a reason,” Keys said. “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.”

Injuries, nerves, tough losses, self-doubt: All had taken a toll. Keys went to therapy, which helped teach her that anxiety is natural and something you can play with. She made her boyfriend—and now husband—Bjorn Fratangelo into her coach, which made her happier in her work. She decided to stop fearing change. She switched racquets, strings, and her service motion, all at an advanced age for a tennis player. She stopped trying to be nerveless.

“For whatever reason, it was kind of just like this light bulb moment where I started really buying into, I can be nervous and I can still play good tennis,” Keys said. “Like, those things can live together.”

They can live together, Keys proved, all the way to a Grand Slam title. She learned that the years of effort she had put into trying to win a major was something to be proud of on its own. That, in a way, the journey was the destination and the reward. Knowing she could live without a major gave her the freedom to go and get it.