Madison Keys charges back into view by reaching U.S. Open quarterfinals
NEW YORK — The vast swell of Americans who remain in this Labor Day cookout turned U.S. Open is appropriately varied, as fans were reminded Monday. They hail from different quadrants of the country, from San Diego to the Quad Cities to Hyattsville. They are diverse in race and upbringing and path to professional tennis. And despite the fresh wave of enthusiasm over their collective success, they are not all new to the sport’s top tier.
Madison Keys has been here before. On Monday, the 28-year-old charged into the quarterfinals for a third time at the U.S. Open with a coldblooded 6-1, 6-3 win over Jessica Pegula, her good friend and the highest-ranked American woman.
Keys, seeded 17th, was the underdog against the third-seeded Pegula, a 29-year-old who started the holiday slate at Arthur Ashe Stadium having won 11 of her past 13 matches, collecting a title in Montreal along the way. But experience and steady play won out over the match’s 61 minutes. Pegula looked tight and wasn’t able to execute off her first serve as Keys bludgeoned winner after winner until she had 21 to her opponent’s six. In less than 14 hours, the women’s draw had lost its first and third seeds; world No. 1 Iga Swiatek fell to 2017 French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko on Sunday night.
Keys finds herself in familiar environs, but it has been a while. Coupled with her quarterfinal run at Wimbledon, this is the first time she has made back-to-back quarterfinals at Grand Slams since 2018, when she reached at least the quarterfinals in three of the four major tournaments.
Advertisement
In 2017, she lost to Sloane Stephens in the final in New York as part of a throng of exciting Americans of that era. Keys, Stephens, CoCo Vandeweghe and Venus Williams composed an all-American semifinal that summer; Keys and Serena Williams were semifinalists a year later.
“Having success here those years ago ... Jess wasn’t playing at the time, Coco [Gauff] wasn’t playing at the time, so [I] was usually one of the ones that people were talking about,” Keys said.
Her success this year reminds that tennis careers are long, growing longer and often circuitous. It doesn’t have to be a sobering thought for spectators yearning to throw themselves into Frances Tiafoe fandom or Gauff-related mania. It just is.
Following her semifinal here in 2018, Keys made one quarterfinal, at Wimbledon in 2019, and one semifinal, at the 2022 Australian Open, over 13 major tournament appearances until this year. She has said the latter came about after she released ultrahigh expectations she had for herself, solved some pandemic-related anxiety and stopped obsessing over rankings.
Her goals now are small and tangible rather than performance-based, such as adding more slice or being more aggressive on her second serve. She remembered she loves the tactile work of improving her craft. The wins aren’t accidental, but they are secondary in her mind.
“After all these years playing, it’s kind of the point now where I don’t have to be out here anymore. I get to be out here,” said Keys, who turned pro on her 14th birthday. “As long as I’m having fun and choose to be out here, then I’m going to continue playing, but kind of taking away that extra feeling of, like, ‘I have to do this, and if things go wrong, then what am I going to do?’ has been much better for my mental health.”
If it’s tinkering Keys adores, she has a fun opponent up next. She will meet reigning Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova, who is struggling with a sore arm and dropped a set for the first time in the tournament Monday but won her fourth-round match, 6-7 (7-3), 6-3, 6-2, against Peyton Stearns, the 2022 NCAA champion at Texas.
Advertisement
Vondrousova, a low-key 24-year-old who became known en route to her title at the All England Club for her many tattoos and her beloved cat, Frankie, has a nightmarish game: The No. 9 seed is a left-hander with a flat disposition and languid movement that belie a lethal shot-making ability. She gives her opponents next to no energy.
“She’s a crafty player. … Sometimes I’d hit a really good shot, and I thought, ‘That’s not coming back,’ ” Stearns said. “She’d get a racket on it and just chip it in the court.”
To prepare, Keys plans to practice against a lefty ahead of Wednesday’s match, though she already has one such session — against Vondrousova herself — under her belt. The pair hit ahead of the tournament, when the Czech discovered firsthand just how hard and fast Keys wallops her groundstrokes and serves.
“I think [I’m going to] run so much for everything,” Vondrousova said, smiling. “... She’s at home also. She played finals here couple years ago. I feel like she feels great here, so it’s going to be a very tough match.”
Keys agreed with that assessment, both about the rigor of the challenge ahead and the fact that, after all these years, she’s back to feeling great in New York.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGeAcHyYaGdtZ52Wsaq%2FzqdkpJ2pqHq2v4yop56mXabCor7TnqmfoZ6WubR7