On the professional tennis circuit, you never know when your big moment will come.
American Madison Keys illustrated that in January, when she finished a remarkable race to win the Australian Open, beating a row of female tennis beams along the way.
For Keys, who was 30 years old in February, it testified to hard work and stick. She had played in 45 Grand Chelem events without victory. In fact, she had only reached a final. But n ° 46 was a thing of beauty.
She won the title, beating N ° 10 Danielle Collins, n ° 6 Elena Rybakina, n ° 2 IGA Swiatek and n ° 1 ARYNA SABALENKA along the way.
Keys has not played a match in the six weeks since the trophy is raised in Australia. The BNP Paribas Open will be her first tournament as a Grand Chelem champion, and she said it was not lost for her.
“Upon entering this tournament, I would lie if I said that I did not have more expectations after starting the year I did,” Keys said who also won the Adelaide tournament before the Australian Open. “But at the same time, it is really important for me and for my team to remember how we arrived and what we were doing. So, I think that staying really anchored in this will be really important.”
Finding this ideal point in its mental state between being more confident, but not becoming a different player is what is important.
“The balance between being honest with my expectations, but also to know that I do not think that anyone really prosperous when you have a change of spirit so dramatic so quickly after success,” said Keys, who is now player 5 in the world, his highest ranking.
Bringing some confidence with her to Indian Wells could be useful because she did not do much to the BNP Paribas Open throughout her career to write at home. She played this event 11 times and did not exceed the fourth round (quarter -final in 2022). His career record in the desert is 10-11.
She will seek to continue her current sequence of 11 consecutive victories on Saturday when she opened her open campaign of 2025 BNP Paribas against Anastasia Potapova.
And she will do it with a talented coach and a new husband in his camp, and it’s the same person. Keys married the former pro-American tennis player Bjorn Fratangelo in November. He has been his coach for a year and a half. It is difficult not to notice that the best three months of his career came after their marriage.
One of the marriage guests in Charleston, in South Carolina, has just been twice winner of BNP Paribas Open and current analyst of the tennis channel Lindsay Davenport. Davenport said that she had left the wedding happy and contained for her friend, but took a break to wonder what it could mean for her tennis.
“It can go in two ways, right?” Then, to see the level of tennis she played in January. Obviously, she and Bjorn have put a lot of work and took a long time to really think about the type of player she wanted to be, which would help her become this type of player, then they went to work. “
A new Madison Keys 2.0 seems to have been unlocked.
“This is the kind of thing that many people outside do not see,” said Davenport. “Bricker of the equipment, making her uncomfortable in practices pushing her in a place where before, she was perhaps uncomfortable, learning to manage each stage along the way. The results were quite remarkable.”
Fratangelo, whose highest career ranking was n ° 99, can hold a statistical nugget on his new wife. He actually has a better percentage of victories in Indian wells than the keys. He played in the main draw three times in his career and went 3-3 in six games. Two of his three defeats came to Novak Djokovic. In 2017, Fratangelo took the first set against Djokovic. It ended up being the only Djokovic set lost that year on the way to the title.
But let’s go back to Keys who said that she had had a moment A-HA in the past year with the mental side of her game which contributed to her recent success, and talk to her coach who became a husband to change his line of thought during the matches.
“For any reason, for a long time, I just had this notion that the best players and players who won major tournaments are somehow capable of deactivating their nerves and who simply do not have to face them. And I do not know why I had this thought or where I got it, but it’s just how I thought things went,” she said.
“So for me, when the nerves would finally start to happen, it was a kind of immediate panic of” well, now I’m not going to play well because people cannot win with these feelings. “He just took things through things to finally understand it, and just a lot of work.
Healthy, happy and mentally concentrated. It is a good recipe to bring home your first Grand Slam trophy. A trophy that she never let out of her sight.
“I actually brought the trophy back to the house with me. It made on several flights in one piece, so it was good,” she said with a big smile. “It’s very large, so he is currently sitting in our guest room until we have a good space for that.”
Shad Powers is a columnist for the desert sun. Go to [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Madison Keys enters the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells in 11 victory games at 11 games
