Exactly a year ago, Madison Keys was in Adelaide ready to start what turned out to be “a perfect three weeks” of tennis Down Under.
The American scooped up five wins in a row – all against women ranked in the top 25 – to clinch the title in Adelaide. She then flew to Melbourne and added seven more victories, including ones over the world’s top two Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, to lift the first Grand Slam trophy of her career.
Achieving that just a few weeks shy of her 30th birthday, Keys became the oldest first-time Australian Open women’s champion in the Open Era and the first player to beat the world’s top two at the same major in 16 years.
“A year later it feels a little bit more real. But it will still be obviously the highlight of my career,” Keys said in Adelaide on Sunday ahead of her title defence.
“And it's an amazing experience here, and the fact that it was basically a perfect three weeks. I'm not sure I could ever replicate that, and I'm certainly not going to be trying to replicate that.”
Starting her 2025 on such a high note and fulfilling her lifelong goal of winning a slam was a “dream” according to Keys. But it also thrust her into uncharted territory and piled on the pressure on her shoulders as she showed up to events as a major champion for the first time.
Her husband and coach Bjorn Fratangelo thought that experiencing all this at 30, as opposed to earlier in her career, would make it easier for Keys to adjust to her new status; but it turns out, pressure knows no age and not much can prepare you for what comes after achieving something this big for the first time.
“I think it was harder than I thought it was going to be,” Fratangelo told The National in an interview in Riyadh at the end of last season.
“I think it put pressure on her, which I really wasn't expecting because she is a little bit older. I think when you go from being the child prodigy to the 'It' girl, being young, making your first slam final. I think she was 22 [when she made the US Open final] in 2017. I think doing all that, she had all the practice under her belt to deal with what comes.
“I just think she wasn't ready for how much it was going to be. And then I think just tires you out after a while, all the off-court stuff, all the demands that she had. It just led to a little bit of a lull, I think, through the grass swing.”
Having started 2025 with an unbeaten 16-0 run – winning Adelaide, Australian Open and making the semi-finals at Indian Wells – Keys finished her campaign with a 37-15 mark.
She qualified for the WTA Finals as one of the world’s top eight players for the first time in nine years and entered the offseason with a clear idea of the mentality she needs to manage the pressure of being the defending champion in Melbourne next week.
“I think the biggest thing is getting to the point where it's not about not feeling the pressure, but knowing how to navigate through it,” Keys told The National at the season-ending championships in Riyadh.
“I think I sometimes get in the habit of trying to avoid it and push it away and just say everything is great and fine and it'll be okay. And then I walk out onto the match court and because I've been avoiding it for the last three weeks or whatever, then it kind of just all hits you and then you feel unprepared.
“So I think it's much more about how to use tools to help you get through it and expect that it's going to be there. And the reality of it is sometimes you do a great job at handling it and other times you don't. It's the reality of sports, the reality of life.
“So I think trying to figure out what mental space you're in when you handle it well, trying to get yourself to that place as often as possible, I think is important. But I think you also just know that some days are going to be a lot harder than others.”
Keys said on Sunday she’s trying to look at things from a perspective that it’s actually a privilege being the title holder and returning to a place where she experienced the highlight of her career.
“I'm really challenging myself to kind of flip that [pressure narrative] and think of it as what a really cool opportunity that not many people get to have,” she explained.
“I get to go back here [in Adelaide], and in Melbourne, and be defending champion. And I have all these people who watched my run and got to kind of experience it, and everyone always tells me that they cried.
“So I feel like I gained a lot of fans from that run as well. That doesn't happen very often, and that's such a cool experience. I'm really kind of just trying to think about that and think about how cool that is and what an experience. I just get to be really proud of myself for being able to give myself that opportunity. So that's been my big goal so far for 2026.”
It’s not just Keys who is navigating these circumstances for the first time. Fratangelo too had never been the coach of a major champion before.
Has he reached out to anyone for advice or guidance?
“I talked to (Australian coach) Darren Cahill a little bit during Wimbledon. I have some help at home. I've actually offered that she wanted to bring other people in. I don't really have an ego. I don't care if it's me or not,” he replied.
“But she's kind of content with how things are. So I think it's just us managing it together as a team and kind of doing what we're doing. And hopefully it can work again. And if it doesn't, there's a long year to make up the results. Everybody starts from zero anyways. And that's all we can really do.”
Keys kicked off her 2026 by reaching the quarter-finals in Brisbane, before losing to top-seeded Sabalenka on Friday.
She says she took positives from her opening week, admitting that facing someone of Sabalenka’s calibre this early in the season was a bit of a tall order.
The world No 7 has now shifted her focus to Adelaide – a tournament she has won twice in as many appearances.
While she isn’t obsessing over trying to replicate her success from last year, she knows that playing a tournament in the week prior to the Australian Open has served her well in the past.
She doesn’t like arriving too early to a major and spending too many days on-site in the build-up – “I feel like the days kind of get long, and I get a little bit antsy,” she says – and playing in Adelaide will allow her to test out some of the things she’s been working on in her game.
“I think that I have really been trying to focus on trying to get to the net a little bit more, and I think my biggest goal, not only for here but really just for the entire year, is to do the things that kind of make me uncomfortable on the court,” she said in Brisbane.
“I think sometimes, especially if I get nervous or it's in tight moments, I fall back on being a little bit more comfortable, which I think sometimes actually gets me in trouble. So I think continuing to try to do the things that I have been working on in practice in matches in the big moments is probably my biggest goal of the year.”
Keys is the second seed in Adelaide and will begin her title defence against former Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko or Czech teen Tereza Valentova.
