Taylor Fritz, Madison Keys learn to love Madrid's fast clay by sticking to their strengths

Theoretically, Madrid should be the go-to clay-court event for American players. The ball flies more quickly in the city’s high-altitude air, and the surface at the Caja Magica, which is laid down and pulled up again each year, plays more like a hard court than it does at older venues in Monte Carlo, Rome, and Paris. In those conditions, U.S. players should be able to win points they way they like to: As quickly as possible.

The operative word in that sentence is “should.”

“My literally entire career, everyone has been, ‘You’ll love Madrid. It’s amazing. You’re going to do so well there,” Madison Keys said this week when she was asked about the seemingly U.S.-friendly confines.

But like virtually all of her fellow Americans, this power player hasn’t found the Spanish capital any more welcoming than any other clay-court tournament. Less so, in fact.

“I’ve lost first or second round, except for once, every single year,” said Keys, who has been a finalist in Rome and semifinalist at Roland Garros.

She’s not alone. No U.S. man has reached the final in Madrid since it switched from hard courts to clay in 2009. On the women’s side, Jessica Pegula made the final two years ago, but she was the first to get that far since Serena Williams won the title in 2013. For Americans, it seems, clay is clay, even when it’s a little quicker. We don’t grow up on it, learn to slide on it, or develop our playing styles around it.

At least that’s how it seemed until this week, when Keys and Taylor Fritz have both made surprise runs to the semifinals. Keys has knocked out two Top 10 seeds in Coco Gauff and Ons Jabeur, in see-saw three-setters. Fritz beat No. 8 seed Hubert Hurkacz and prevailed in three sets over Francisco Cerundolo in the quarterfinals on Wednesday. Before this year, Fritz’s record at the Caja Magica was an ordinary 3-3, and he lost twice in qualifying.

What are the Floridian and the Californian doing differently in 2024?

According to Keys, she finally stopped thinking about how well she was supposed to do in Madrid.

“I was trying to force something to happen, and I think, as everyone knows, when you're trying to force something to happen it seems like it gets further and further away from you,” she said.

“So finally really just honestly saying, F-it, and I’m just going go out and do my best, and we’ll see what happens. Then I really feel like Ive finally been able to kind of work myself into playing some good tennis here.”

For Fritz, doing well this week has been about remembering that his major strength, his serve, works the same way on every surface. Against Hurkacz, he fired 10 aces and won 88 percent of his first-serve points; against Cerundolo, his serve kept him above water when the Argentine found a ground-stroke groove.

“It was really hard to hit through him,” Fritz said of Cerundolo. “It was really tough from the ground. I had to hang in with my serve.”

Still, Fritz says the surface here suits the rest of his game as well.

“The bounces are still high and explosive, which is great for my forehand,” he said of the Madrid dirt. “It’s great for me to just serve and attack.”

Last month, when Ben Shelton and Danielle Collins won clay-court titles on the same day in Houston and Charleston, I wondered if it was a harbinger of better things for the Americans once the tour hit European red dirt. The fact that two different U.S. players, Fritz and Keys, would make the semis in Madrid shows the depth of the country’s tennis pool at the moment. After putting a greater emphasis on the clay game at the junior level over the past 10 years, the U.S. has produced a group of players who feel a little more comfortable on it than generations of the past.

Will what happens in Madrid stay in Madrid? Or will Keys and Fritz and other Americans contend in Rome and Paris as well? It’s probably best to slide across those bridges when we come to them.