Hey Aryna Sabalenka, we know you’re getting ready to go for your Australian Open three-peat Saturday and you’re No. 1 in the world and far and away the best hard court player on the women’s tour.
But for all of us American tennis fans, can you please just let Madison Keys have this one?
My goodness does she deserve it.
A few weeks from her 30th birthday, Keys played the match of her life Thursday morning in the U.S. (Thursday night in Australia) to outlast No. 2 Iga Swiatek 5-7, 6-1, 7-6, capped by a 10-8 tiebreak in which it seemed like Keys was fighting from behind the entire way until a late burst of energy lifted her over the finish line.
It took a stunning amount of clutch tennis for Keys to pull this off. At 4-4 in the third set, she had to erase a 0-40 deficit and ultimately save four break points. Then, after getting broken at 5-5, Keys found some heavy forehands and saved a match point to scratch out a break of serve and send it to the tiebreaker.
There, Keys was down 3-1, 4-2, 5-3, 6-4, 7-5 and 8-7 — all of those moments potential backbreakers — before reeling off the last three points and joyfully screaming into her racket as Swiatek’s final forehand sailed long.
For American tennis fans who have followed Keys over the years, it would have been hard to have faith that this one was going to go her direction. Maybe for Keys, too.
She’s had a wonderful career: Nine WTA titles, a long time in the top 10 and nearly $20 million in earnings. But there have also been so, so many times that Keys has been on the verge of a big breakthrough in the Grand Slams only to have something go heartbreakingly wrong.
The one time she made a Slam final, at the 2017 US Open, Keys didn’t put her best foot forward against her good friend Sloane Stephens and got swept off the court 6-3, 6-0. Every subsequent attempt to get back to that stage of a major has been disappointing — perhaps none moreso than the 2023 US Open when Keys let a 6-0, 5-3 lead over Sabalenka slip away and also couldn’t close the deal in the third set from up 4-2. In the fourth round at Wimbledon a year ago when it looked like everything was lining up for a deep run, Keys was up 5-2 in the third against eventual finalist Jasmine Paolini before hurting her leg and retiring at 5-5.
At this stage of her career, we don’t have to harp on the fact that Keys doesn’t have a ton of time to put a Grand Slam in her trophy case. This may be as good a shot as she gets.
And as well as she played to beat Swiatek, the task in front of her will be even more difficult.
All kidding aside, Sabalenka is not going to give this title up easily. For three straight years now, she’s been at her absolute best in Australia. This time, Sabalenka has dropped only one set in her run to the finals and seems completely dialed into the court speed, the conditions and what she needs to keep her massive baseline power game within the margins.
In the head-to-head matchup, Keys has only won one of five meetings — all the way back in 2021 on a grass court in Berlin.
So let’s be real: All the data points to another Sabalenka win, which would be her fourth Slam title and very much put her in contention to be the best player of the post-Serena Williams era.
At the same time, there’s just something irresistible about the entire career arc of turning pro at age 14 under massive expectations, accomplishing a lot in the game but maybe not quite what everyone thought, then finally getting the ultimate reward after so many years and chances have gone by.
What a great story that would be for Keys, who has been really good for a long time but not quite good enough to win one of these tournaments.
The effort she put forth to beat Swiatek on Thursday was powerful, resilient, Slam-winning tennis. It was a performance for Keys and all of her fans in America to be proud of.
Now she’ll have to do it all over again — and then some — to avoid another gut-wrenching near-miss at a Grand Slam. The old Sabalenka might have given away a final. She was too wild, too emotionally volatile, too anxious to perform on that stage. But now, this is her comfort zone.
So there’s no other option for Keys. After playing the match of her life, winning the Australian Open will require her to play that level of tennis one more time.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on social media @DanWolken