What Has Happened To Madison Keys?

When a player is ready to be great, the breakthrough becomes the norm.  When a player is ready to be great, the results meet the expectations  When a player is ready to be great, surprise turns into a steady focus.  Madison Keys is not quite ready to be great yet.

Madison looked spectacular in Australian Open run in January.  She made the Semifinals, beating great players such Petra Kvitova (in straight sets) and Venus Williams along the way.  In fact, Keys only lost two sets en-route to the Semifinals and was within a two point swing of taking the first set from Serena Williams in an extremely tight first set.  I remember sitting on my couch watching Madison rocket aces past Serena and thinking to myself, "This girl is unbelievable".  Even though she lost that semifinal match against Serena, the world now knew Madison Keys' name, the breakthrough was complete.

However, the next step of the process is turning the breakthrough into the norm, which entails dealing the new pressures to succeed, dealing with the increased media presence (and outside distractions) surrounding you, and trying to stay humble.  Obviously, this step is extremely hard to take,and it seems like Madison is having a very hard time taking this next step.

Following her great run in Melbourne, Keys went on to lose in her second match to a struggling (at the time) Jelena Jankovic at Indian Wells, and in her first match to Sloane Stephens in Miami to go a measly 1-2 in the spring American hard court swing.  Gone was the jubilation of the run in Melbourne, replaced instead by the realization that the WTA tour (and the ATP tour for that matter) moves on with or without you.

Perhaps this was a wake-up call for Madison, because she performed quite well on the green clay in Charleston.  I suspect, however, that this was more due to weak competition than anything else, as the strongest player Madison faced was Lauren Davis before the Final.  However, I'm sure that these easier matches boosted Keys' confidence and allowed her to forget about her failures in Indian Wells and Miami.  In the Final, though, Madison was leading 4-1 in the third set before collapsing and losing the third set 7-5, thus giving Angelique Kerber the tournament win.  It took a lot of mental strength to make the semis in Melbourne (especially her tough win over Venus in the Quarterfinals), but it seems as if that mental strength did not transfer over to Charleston.

And Madison has not seemed to recover from that Charleston loss, losing in her first match in Madrid, in straight sets to Kaia Kanepi, and losing in her second match at Rome to Bojana Jovanovski, for another 1-2 record at big tournaments on the European clay court swing.  At the small event in Strasbourg (currently going on this week), Keys won her first two matches, including a TOUGH match over Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, before withdrawing with an injury, unable to gain any real momentum heading towards the French Open.

So, what do I think has happened to Madison Keys?  I think she is overwhelmed right now.  Overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed within the game and the new pressures around her outside of the game.  Her confidence from the Australian Open also seems to be gone too, so Lindsey Davenport will really have to work with Madison regarding her confidence too.  Lindsey will also have to try to get Madison to focus in on tennis itself, and not worry about what's going outside of the game.

At the end of the day, I still see a great future for Madison.  It just might not come as soon as many predicted.