“It hasn’t really changed my life”: Madison Keys reflects on her long road to Grand Slam glory

Madison Keys returned to Adelaide this week, a special city in her career — not only because she won the title there in her only two appearances at the Adelaide International, but also because it was where her remarkable winning streak in 2025 began. That run continued all the way through the Australian Open, where she surprisingly captured the first Grand Slam title of her career in Melbourne.

Keys’ start to the 2025 season was simply outstanding. After falling in the quarterfinals of the ASB Classic in her opening week of competition, she travelled to Adelaide — a tournament she had previously won in 2022 — and launched a winning streak that extended to 16 matches.

In Adelaide, she defeated four top-20 opponents, including two top-10 players, among them Jessica Pegula in the final. She then carried that momentum into Melbourne, where she eliminated players such as Danielle Collins (No. 11), Elena Rybakina (No. 7), Elina Svitolina (No. 27), and Iga Swiatek (No. 2) to reach another Grand Slam final — nearly eight years after her loss to Sloane Stephens in the 2017 US Open final.

Her winning run continued until Indian Wells, where she reached the semifinals and eventually fell to world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, who took revenge for her defeat in the Melbourne final.

Unlike many other players on tour, Keys explained in her press conference why her life did not change dramatically after winning her first major title. “Everyone loves to ask me if it’s changed my life. I don’t think that it’s really changed my life,” she said in her first press conference in Adelaide. “It’s a huge accomplishment, and it’s something I’m massively proud of myself for. But I think I’m a bit of a different first-time Slam winner than we’ve had the past couple of years. A lot of them have been like 19, or they came from qualies, or things like that.”

The current world No. 9 won her first major title later in her career, at the age of 30, having already collected nine WTA titles — the first of them back in 2014. She had reached her first Grand Slam final at the 2017 US Open and had already recorded more than 30 career wins against top-10 opponents before the start of the Australian Open.

In fact, Keys had been seeded in Grand Slam tournaments for 11 consecutive years, starting 33 of her previous 35 major appearances as a seeded player. For that reason, the American argued that her success in Melbourne was not a radical change, but rather a welcome surprise within the tennis world.

“So seeing as I’ve had many more years on tour, and everyone kind of knew me, and I’ve had pretty high levels of success already, it was just kind of one of those things that people are really happy that I finally achieved it, but it wasn’t quite a shock across the sport,” she added. “So things haven’t changed that differently, other than just the fact that I just kind of get to put my name in the history book there.”

One of the topics Keys discussed in more depth was becoming a major champion after so many years of remaining among the top players, winning titles, and making deep runs at Grand Slam tournaments. She admitted that early in her career, winning a major became almost an obsession, and that the time it took to finally achieve it has given her a new perspective.

“I think my first years on tour it was almost kind of one of those things where I had this thought that it was absolutely going to happen, and then I started putting more and more pressure on myself when it didn’t happen,” the 2025 Australian Open champion explained. “Then it became kind of that elusive, ‘will it ever happen?’”

“So I think I really had to kind of work through all of that just to get myself to a point where I was okay if it didn’t happen, and I could see all of my success that I had had as a major achievement with or without a Grand Slam. I think getting to that point really kind of settled me and let me find the level that I was able to find last year to win the Australian Open.”