Madison Keys. (AP Photo)
The Times of India in Melbourne: Madison Keys walked into her post-championship media interaction in black tights and a blue tee, wearing her wholesome halo.
“I think everyone needs therapy,” she said. Keys, who dug deep in her media conference, said the talk around her as a child was meant to be confidence-building, an exercise in positivity. If it doesn’t happen, I didn’t live up to what everyone told me I should have done,” Keys said. “I finally got to the point where I was proud of myself and proud of my career, with or without a Grand Slam,” she said, looking at the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup. “I didn’t need it to feel like I had a good career.”
The Australian Open champion took a sip of the celebratory bubbly and spoke eloquently about shifting goal posts, development tools, and the importance of therapy. “Then you are older, you’re in the later stages of your career and it kind of feels like, will this ever happen? “It went from being something positive to something that (triggered) a little bit of panic. It started to kind of weigh on me. What if I never do it? If I don’t do it, am I considered a failure?
Keys, who on Saturday became the oldest player to defeat the World No.1 and No.2 in the semifinal and final at a Grand Slam event since the WTA rankings were published in 1975, said she owed her turnaround to lots of therapy. Keys, soon to be 30, is the lowest-seeded player (No.19) to win the Australian Open in the Open Era.
I never really like to be uncomfortable,” Keys said, she was speaking for a majority. “(But) had I not done that, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” “Getting help and talking to someone not just about tennis, but about how I felt about myself, again, very uncomfortable.