Madison Keys is the Grand Slam champion we can all cheer for

Madison Keys ended a sometimes agonizing decade of trying to win a Grand Slam singles title last year at the Australian Open. In the ensuing days, weeks and months, people of all stripes approached her to ask how the experience had changed her life.

“It's funny, everyone keeps asking me that,” Keys told reporters a few days ago, before launching her campaign to defend the title. “It hasn't changed that much, other than I have a really cool trophy at home.

“I also have a lot of people that come up to tell me that my winning made them cry. It's just really been cool as an athlete to have had that impact [because] I've always tried to be very open and honest with everything that goes on in the sport. I kind of do my part of humanizing this part of the sport.”

That’s Keys in a nutshell: grounded, self-aware, conscious of feelings other than her own.

Now 30 and ranked No. 9, Keys evolved from a coltish prodigy who made her first Grand Slam semifinal a decade ago to become a second-tier star. Her trademarks were a walloping forehand, and a habit of misplacing her game in a fog of anxiety—a glitch that eventually became a dreaded feature. But all that changed last February, when Keys joined the elite circle of Grand Slam singles champions. Her triumph left no mark: she remains averse to celebrity and the rough-and-tumble world of influencers and social media, an empath who may be the most admirable if not the most bigged-up star in tennis.

Keys advanced to the third round of the Australian Open on Thursday in Melbourne, dispatching compatriot Ashlyn Krueger, 6-1, 7-5. This was another hurdle cleared in her attempt to build on what she achieved last year, to show it was no fluke. She overcame a shaky start in her first-round win, and staved off a spirited second-set surge by Krueger. Next, she will face a two-time Grand Slam singles finalist, Karolina Pliskova.

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“I started really well,” Keys said in her post-match interview. “Obviously. I was expecting Ashleigh to raise her level, which she did. I was just really happy that I was able to stay gritty and stay in that second set and be able to get out of it with a straight-sets win.”

Keys doesn’t really match the profile of a contemporary tennis star. She is neither an attention-seeking extrovert nor an all-business-all-the-time achiever swathed in a cocoon of coaches and handlers. These days, many of the sport’s stars work furiously on their “brands,” eager to be celebrated for things other than how expertly they whack a tennis ball. But Keys isn’t part of that cohort. She is too well-grounded. Her only crossover success, if you even want to call it that, has been as the figurehead of the anti-bullying foundation she established in 2020, Kindness Wins.

The main themes running through Keys’ career have been a focus on well-being, her own as well as that of others. Some players have admitted to having struggles with their mental health, others have cited it in attempts to explain their results, or status. Keys, though, has been the plain-spoken, lucid advocate for mental health, to the point that at Wimbledon last year she spoke frankly about the value of therapy.

“It's been incredibly helpful to me,” she said in a news conference. “I've tried sports psychologists in the past, but for me just everything being so focused on just the sport and just tennis was not as helpful as I needed it to be.

I think really going to someone and kind of looking at my overall life, and kind of how that was influencing how I felt on the court, probably made the biggest difference.

Keys went on to explain how a successful young athlete’s sense of identity inevitably becomes “wrapped up” in being a tennis player. As a result, repeated frustration or disappointment on the court can impact a player’s self-image. This was Keys’ lived experience until professional help, and her marriage to fellow pro Bjorn Fratangelo in November of 2024, helped restore balance in her life.

Although winning the 2025 Australian Open will always be described as her great “breakthrough,” the real leap that enabled her finally to win big occurred months before the tournament.

Marriage has helped Keys become noticeably more self-confident and relaxed. When asked a few days ago how things have changed a year down the road from the altar, she replied, “My husband has threatened that if I try to renovate any more parts of our house, I will be thrown out. I think it's been 18 months of construction at our house. He's asked me to at least take a year break, which I feel is fair.”

After a beat, she turned serious and went on to describe how  traveling with her husband instead of solo has been “absolutely amazing.”

Marital bliss has not blunted Keys’ interest in promoting kindness and understanding among her peers. She has been a unique voice in the debate over how big a slice of Grand Slam tournament revenues ought to be allocated for increased player compensation.

“I am more concerned about wanting these Slams to put it (money) towards player welfare [than just prize money],” she said in Melbourne.“I think the tours obviously do that, (with) our healthcare, pension and all that. I mean, at the end of the day, I think we're all partners, and we all need each other.”

The more immediate concern for Keys is the Australian Open draw. Potential roadblocks to a final rematch with Aryna Sabalenka include Jessica Pegula, Amanda Anisimova and Iga Swiatek. But it’s not like last year’s path to the final was strewn with roses, either. She had to beat Aryna Sabalenka and Swiatek, the top two seeds, along with former Wimbledon champ Elena Rybakina and veteran Elina Svitolina.

Keys said that having to endure excruciating battles with those women made her victory seem that much sweeter.

“You just kind of have moments in your career where things just are going right. And that's kind of how it felt for a couple of weeks,” she said. “It’s easy to look back and kind of romanticize it. I played unbelievable tennis, but everyone likes to remind me that I lost more games than anyone in history while winning a Grand Slam.”

She wryly added, “So obviously there was some room for improvement there.”

Keys is not one to let room for improvement go unnoticed, whether it’s in her game or in her home. After revealing Fratangelo’s hard-line stance on further home improvements, she added, “Part of marriage allegedly, is compromise. We'll see if that actually happens. There's one more bathroom that I could quickly renovate.”