World No.22 Madison Keys is the founder of Kindness Wins, a non-profit organization that was created to spread kindness around the world and the WTA star was busy over the weekend as her organization handed out another Medal of Kindness Award to a deserving recipient.
Founded in 2020, Kindness Wins hands out awards to inspirational people who are making the world a better place, and Keys was on hand on Saturday as she gave out a Medal of Kindness award to a junior tennis advocate and Community Program Development Manager at the United States Tennis Association, April Gift.
Gift is responsible for coordinating tennis scholarships in the Junior Team Tennis programs and is dubbed the “Pied Piper” of tennis by her colleagues and friends at the Charleston Open.
"I was so touched when I learned how much April does for the tennis community of Charleston, specifically all the time and effort she puts into outreach for juniors,” Keys explained. “She works tirelessly to get more young people playing the sport which is not only great for tennis but also great for the kids to get out and have fun doing something new.
“The Medal of Kindness is all about honoring those who do so much out of the goodness of their hearts, and that’s exactly what April does.”
This is the fourth medal that Keys has handed out so far this year as part of Kindness Wins and just two weeks ago she gave the Miami Open Tournament Director James Blake an award for his cancer research and for championing equality.
The 27-year-old American isn’t alone in being a champion of Kindness Wins as two-time Olympic gold medalist alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin and multi-sport Paralympian Oksana Masters are also part of the organization.
Growing up in a household where soccer was king, my earliest memories are filled with chants from packed stadiums and the rhythm of a ball being passed across neighborhood streets. But somewhere along the way, the quiet elegance and raw emotion of tennis pulled me in. What began as a curiosity became a lifelong passion; not just for the sport itself, but for the stories it tells: of grit, of heartbreak, of improbable comebacks and human resilience.
As a tennis writer, I bring the observational lens of someone who didn’t grow up in the sport, but fell in love with it as an outsider; a perspective that lets me see both its technical beauty and its emotional depth. Over the years working with TennisUpToDate, I’ve had the privilege of reaching more than 3.5 million readers worldwide, with one of my features ranking among the site’s top three articles.
With a background in storytelling and a creative mind always searching for meaning beyond the scoreboard, I aim to craft narratives that go deeper than results and rankings. Whether it’s a rising star breaking through or a veteran fighting off Father Time, I try to capture the heartbeat behind the headlines.
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