AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 26, 2025

Madison Keys

Press Conference

M. KEYS/A. Sabalenka

6-3, 2-6, 7-5

CRAIG TILEY: Welcome, everyone. I would just like to start out, Maddie, awesome. So good tonight.

MADISON KEYS: Thank you.

CRAIG TILEY: Great match. You've been so good this summer. We all love you here. You're always one of our favorites. It's great to get you to where you were today, to win that match. It was fantastic.

Cheers to Madison Keys.

MADISON KEYS: Thank you.

THE MODERATOR: Madison, congratulations. Grand Slam Champion. Talk through your emotions right now and reflections on the match.

MADISON KEYS: I'm mostly just really proud of myself to get back to this position and be able to play the way that I played and finish on such a strong note. I'm just really proud of myself.

I didn't always believe that I could get back to this point. But to be able to do it and win, it means the world to me.

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. I know you have nothing to compare it to, but where you sit now, given this journey that you've been on in order to get here, can you reflect at all about how it feels having gone through all that and to get to the top of the mountain this way rather than maybe if it had happened eight years ago? I'm curious, the classic idea of does it make it all worthwhile?

MADISON KEYS: I think everything kind of happens for a reason. 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.

I felt like 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.

Q. You were in here the other night talking about how you wanted to be inspired by the way Aryna played. You didn't want to be passive at the big moments. How proud are you of the way that you finished that match?

MADISON KEYS: Definitely one of the things that I'm most proud of, being able to at the end just kind of -- I almost felt like I was trying to beat her to it. 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. 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.

Q. In your first answer, people talked about you being a likely Grand Slam champion for a long time. When is the first time you remember someone saying that about you? How did that come from an exciting possibility to feeling like a burden?

MADISON KEYS: I mean, it definitely started pretty young. Probably 11, 12, something like that. It obviously was meant to be confidence-building and all of that.

I think as I got older and I had gotten close and it didn't happen, and then it's you're getting older, you're obviously in the later stages of your career, it kind of feels like, Will this ever actually happen? If it doesn't happen, I didn't live up to what everyone told me I should have done.

So I think it kind of almost felt like it went from being something positive to something that was almost, like, a little bit of a panic of, Why hasn't it happened yet? Why haven't I been able to do it?

It really started to kind of weigh on me more where it was, What if I never do it? If I don't do it, am I considered a failure?

There was a lot of stuff that I had to, like, work through personally just with all of that just because of all of the pressure I was putting on myself with that.

Q. Over the last year or so, obviously you've been around on the circuit for a while. I wonder if there a moment or a person you spoke to where the penny dropped and you felt like you feel now, that it wasn't all about whether you won a Grand Slam in terms of how you viewed your career? Was there a specific moment?

MADISON KEYS: Lots of therapy (smiling). I really kind of bought into it. 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 (smiling).

I honestly think that had I not done that, then I wouldn't be sitting here.

Q. You mentioned a couple times on court and now again here about not always believing. You thanked your team for always believing and helping you with that. When did you regain and have that belief that this day might come at some point?

MADISON KEYS: I honestly think kind of through the last year. Even with the injuries and some tough losses, I just kind of felt like I was kind of starting to find myself a little bit more. I was starting to be a little bit more clearheaded and present on court. I felt like I was starting to get better at problem-solving on court in the moment a lot better.

In the past, I kind of felt like sometimes during matches, especially when things started to go awry, I was almost, like, not in my own body and I was kind of looking down at myself. I felt like I couldn't connect my brain to my body.

I felt like last year I started being able to kind of just be more in the moment and take each point by point instead of panicking and getting a little bit too broad.

I felt like I started playing some good tennis and I started figuring things out when I wasn't playing great. Then through off-season, I just put in a lot of hard work. I kind of started to see that things were kind of going more the way that I wanted.

I just feel like it's one of those things that slowly keeps building. All of a sudden you're winning a bunch of matches in Adelaide. Then you're coming in here. I think winning that match the other night against Iga was really kind of a big hurdle where I felt like...

I always believed that I could do it, but to do it that way I think really I thought to myself after the match that I can absolutely win on Saturday.

Q. Has there been a moment of realization during the tournament where you thought, I'm doing pretty fine? Your run was remarkable.

MADISON KEYS: I don't know if I ever really had, like, the moment. I really felt like going into each match that if I could just try to go out, play how I wanted to play, I was really just going to give myself the opportunity to try to win the match.

I felt like not stressing about things that I couldn't control, I just felt like I was able to play a little bit more free.

I think there was a confidence in maybe not playing matches amazingly from start to finish and having some dips here and there, but being able to kind of end on a really high note each time and figure out how to get back in matches or how to close out a match really well.

I just slowly started continuing to build the confidence. I think part of it was that I never really got ahead of myself in each round. I never once thought about the next round until I was actually there.

So I think, yes, I believed that I could do it. I also think I did a good job of just focusing on the task at hand.

Q. Hearing you talk about therapy there and the benefits you've had from it, obviously it's a very personal thing. Do you look around you in the locker room and on the tour and think that it should be more widespread, more accepted, or something that should be offered to younger players or at least talked about as an option?

MADISON KEYS: I think the more that we talk about actually using it as a tool, I think people will feel more comfortable with it.

I do think that the WTA does a great job at having someone at tournaments now that you can go and you can talk to. It's not only helpful for myself, but I think it's helpful for a lot of us.

I mean, the stigma around therapy in general, not just in sports, I think is slowly starting to go away. I think that everyone should be in therapy, no matter what (smiling). I think it helps.

I think no matter what, no matter what's going on in your life, you're going to have moments where things are tough and you need someone to talk to. I think it's very important.

It's something I will continue to do for the rest of my life. I think if more people do it and more people talk about it, then it just kind of becomes the norm. It's almost as if you're going to the doctor. No one bats an eye at that.

I think it's just kind of overwhelmingly needed, I think, for most people.

Q. On that point, you mentioned that you weren't somebody that wanted to be outside of their comfort zone. With going to therapy, was there a particular prompt or moment that made you think why not give it a chance or things had become so difficult, you thought you needed it?

MADISON KEYS: I think in the past I had done it before, but it had always been I think too sports-specific. I kind of always went in with the thought of, Will this help me perform better? 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.

I think doing that, it was just kind of that moment where it was like, I don't really care what I have to do, I just want to feel better. So I think it was kind of the thing that it pushes you to say, Okay, well, obviously whatever I'm doing, is not working.

I think for a long time in my head I had this idea that people were able to kind of just ignore their nerves or doubts or anything like that and just kind of tunnel vision play tennis.

In the past, if I ever had nerves come up or something, I typically would not play as well. So it started getting to the point where when nerves came up, I was thinking, Oh, no, now I'm going to play badly. It would almost kind of start this internal panic.

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. Like, those things can live together.

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.

I think doing that day in and day out and just kind of accepting that it's going to be uncomfortable, you're going to be nervous, there's going to be thousands of people watching you, but you can still do it, and then starting to actually be able to do that just kind of started to give me more confidence.

Q. There's been some really positive receptions, Sloane Stephens, a couple others, have expressed their delight at your success tonight. What does it mean to you when you see peers taking genuine joy in your success here? Also, has the phone been running hot?

MADISON KEYS: I have really grown up on the tour. I've grown up with some other amazing people on this tour. Some of my closest friends also play.

So I think we all are very good at cheering each other on. Their wins feel like our wins. So to be in the position of actually winning and them getting to be the cheerleaders, it feels really nice just because after all these years, watching all of my friends do so well, it has always felt like a win for me.

So I'm happy that I can repay the favor.

Q. Just a question about tomorrow's final. Obviously Alexander Zverev is a bit in the same position. He's been chasing his first Grand Slam victory for a while. If you could just give him one piece of advice, what would it be?

MADISON KEYS: Against Jannik? I feel like he has better advice to beat Jannik than I do.

But, I mean, I think at some point it's really just kind of letting go of the stress of, Will I ever win one, and not really worrying about it and just playing tennis.

At the end of the day that's all you can control. You can only control your side of the court. That's all you can focus on.

If you put yourself in that position enough times, then usually good things happen.