By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Wednesday January 28, 2025
Madison Keys had to let go of her hopes and dreams to achieve them.
Also Read: Keys Wins Maiden Major | 25 Thoughts on AO 25 | Social Media Reacts to Keys Title
After completing her dramatic run to her maiden major title over the weekend in Melbourne, the American talked about the difficult process of dealing with expectations and making sense of her own feelings with regard to her career.
Keys, who edged World No.1 Aryna Sabalenka in Saturday’s final, made several changes to her game, most notably her serve, and also changed racquets and strings in the off-season.
But she also saw a therapist, and she says that it was one of the things that helped her truly unlock her best self.
“I finally got to the point where I was personally low enough that I was like, I don’t really care if this helps me perform, I just want to feel better,” Keys said of her therapy sessions, which weren’t really sport-specific.
Keys said the therapy helped lead to a lightbulb moment that allowed her to manage her nerves better than ever before.
“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. Those things can live together,” she said. “So I stopped fighting, trying to push away the feelings and pretending that they’re not there and just accepting them and really telling myself that they’re fine and they’re totally normal to be there, and I can still play tennis.”
More than anything, Keys made strides in her own mind, and finally accepted her career for what it was. There wasn’t a Grand Slam title on her resume, but did it really matter? She decided that her career was exceptional, with a Slam or without..
“I think everything kind of happens for a reason,” she 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 [dealing with] 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 okay 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.”
