Swiatek, Sabalenka...Keys? Red-hot Madison is making a major mark on clay

It’s been really great mostly because he knows how to communicate with me—it’s the ‘seven years together” factor. So the message lands every time. And he’s really good at reading me and knowing when to deliver certain messages a certain way, which goes a really long way. Madison Keys, following her second-round win over Mayar Sherif at Roland Garros, on the influence of her coach—and fiancé—Bjorn Fratangelo

Keys might have been talking about tennis, but there would be a lot more marital bliss going around if couples who wouldn’t know terre battue from tiramisu would absorb those words. They also play nicely into an ongoing theme at this Roland Garros, which is—as the t-shirt says—“Paris is for lovers.”

There are all sorts of happy couples afoot on the red dirt this year. Stefanos Tsitsipas and his inamorata Paula Badosa, happy parents Elina Svitolina and Gael-force Monfils, Alex de Minaur and Katie Boulter among them. Granted, Fratangelo (a junior Roland Garros champion 13 years ago) is no longer lacing them up as an ATP pro, and while he and Keys are too low key to land on any influencers’ “hot items” list, the partnership has inspired Keys and lifted her into a role as a contender at the French major.

After struggling with injuries earlier this year, Keys is on fire. Despite her hard-court DNA, she’s won 13 of her last 15 matches—all on red clay in Europe. She’s lost only to No. 1 ranked Iga Swiatek (in Madrid and Rome), and won the title a week ago in Strasbourg over sensation thus far this year, Danielle Collins.

“I’m just seeing my game super clearly on this surface,” Keys told Tennis Channel after her win Thursday. “I’ve done a good job at hitting through the heavier (wet and chilly) conditions. I can use my strength to my advantage and stay on my front foot and be aggressive.”

Keys, who is 29 years old and has ranked as high as No. 7, is animated and engaged these days. And no wonder. She and Fratangelo are set to wed in seven months. Interested in design and decor, Keys is taking an active part in building their new home. She has also achieved professional equilibrium after spending a lot of time on the short list of “Best WTA player yet to win a Grand Slam.”

A spectacular, potent shotmaker, Keys hasn’t been able to string together the requisite seven wins to claim a major, but it’s not like she hasn’t tried: She lost the US Open final in 2017, and is a six-time semifinalist at Slams (including in Paris in 2018). Years of striving distorted her priorities, but she recognized the problem and addressed it—coming out wiser at the other end of her self-examination.

“I think as I’ve gotten older and as I’ve gone to therapy, it’s been a really learning experience for me that tennis is an amazing part of who I am, but it’s not who I am,” Keys told press in Paris. When she realized that “tennis pro” isn’t her sole identity, all the tumblers in her mind clicked into place.

“It makes everything so much better,” she said. “The wins are better. The losses are easier. You just figure out that tennis is amazing, and it’s brought so much into your life, but you are allowed to have other things and be different versions of yourself.”

The bonus: the tennis version of herself hasn’t suffered. It has only improved.

I think as I’ve gotten older and as I’ve gone to therapy, it’s been a really learning experience for me that tennis is an amazing part of who I am, but it’s not who I am. Madison Keys

Against Sherif, Keys raced through the first set 6-0, but was forced to call a gut check in close second set, which she won in a tiebreaker to advance to round three. History suggests that the earlier, all-tennis version of Keys might have lost the plot when the momentum shifted so dramatically.

“I was pretty much zoning in that first set,” she said. “Then when I was trying to hit the same shots in the next set they just weren’t going in.”

Instead of punching the panic button, Keys dialed back her aggression, focused on moving better, and tried to stay in points longer before going for the winning placement.

“I buckled down and figured it out,” she said. “Those are the moments that can take you further in a tournament.”

Keys also knew that when she looked up at her guest box, Fratangelo would know just what she needed in the way of communication and support.

“Sometimes when you look up at the box a coach doesn’t want to give too much, or gives too little. They kind of freeze. With Bjorn, that’s never an issue.”

Paris is for lovers, and it’s even sweeter when at least one of them is also a Grand Slam contender.