“Acceptance, therapy and belief”: Madison Keys explains long path to Grand Slam glory
The American said intensive therapy helped her let go of the pressure she was feeling to win a first major
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Madison Keys fulfilled a lifelong dream – and the expectations of many in the sport – when she won her first Grand Slam title at the Australian Open on Saturday, but said it was only when she accepted that she might never win one, and was OK with that, that she finally broke the shackles and played her best tennis.
Keys beat world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 in a brilliant final at Melbourne Park, playing the kind of free tennis that she had previously found so hard to produce, burdened by the pressure of expectation and the fear that she was a failure.
Drinking in her success shortly after her triumph, a glass of champagne in hand, Keys explained how she had got to this point.
“I think everything kind of happens for a reason,” said the 29-year-old, who expressed her pride at getting back to the point where she had a chance to win a Grand Slam, eight years after losing her only previous final, at the US Open.
“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.
“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. That was a pretty heavy burden to kind of carry around.
“So I finally got to the point where I was proud of myself and proud of my career, with or without a Grand Slam. I finally got to the point where I was OK if it didn’t happen. 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.
“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. ”
On needing therapy: “I was really starting to struggle”
Keys said she had needed therapy to understand that winning a Grand Slam was not the be all and end all, that feeling good about herself was more important than the technicalities of trying to win big tennis titles.
“I really kind of bought into it,” she said. “I think in the past I had always kind of tried to go the sports therapy route where it was more about routine and controlling things you can control and all of that.
“I felt like I was always good enough at that, but to really start kind of digging in on how I felt about myself and really being honest with myself about it, it was really hard because I didn’t really want to be the person that felt like I was really struggling, but I was starting to really struggle with it.
“So just being really honest and actually getting help and actually talking to someone, and not just about tennis but about how I felt about myself. Again, very uncomfortable. I never really like to be uncomfortable. I honestly think that had I not done that, then I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“I just kept telling myself, be brave”
In the past, Keys might have wilted when Sabalenka came back at her in the final, the pressure being too much. This time, she remained calm and simply went for it.
“Definitely one of the things that I’m most proud of, being able to at the end…I almost felt like I was trying to beat her to it,” she said. “If I wasn’t going to go for it, I knew she was going to. It really kind of just pushed me to kind of thread the needle a little bit more.
“I just kept telling myself, Be brave, go for it, just kind of lay it all out on the line. 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.”
