Keys contemplates what it will take to reach the summit
Madison Keys is ranked in the top 10 in the world, a Grand Slam semifinalist who just played for an Olympic bronze medal and has earned prize money of well over $4 million in her short pro career.
She’s also only 21, much closer in age to her high school days than to No 1 Serena Williams, and she’s the youngest woman in the top 20 by nearly 18 months.
This is where the American finds herself as she heads into next week’s US Open — an established pro with the skill set to win major titles, yet competing in a sport in which many players peak in their late 20s and even early 30s.
Patient and impatient at the same time about her tennis, Keys is also sorting out what she wants to accomplish off the court.
She announced on Wednesday she will fund and host six summits for teens at schools around the world in 2017 in partnership with the organization FearlesslyGIRL.
“That’s such a tough time for any girl — I know it was a tough time for me,” Keys said.
“To sit down in a big group and talk to each other about it, you realize you’re not so alone. It makes everything seem so much smaller and more manageable.”
Keys has two younger sisters and sees this in a way as just adding many more.
“It’s being able to relate to them on such a personal level, but also knowing it does get better.”
For her, sports was always a part of that.
“When you’re 13 or 14, sometimes you wake up in a bad place,” she said. “You feel like everything’s out of your control. You don’t know what to do.
“But the second I was on the tennis court, I had the structure I wanted. I was in complete control of what I was doing.”
Long considered one of the world’s most promising young players, Keys burst through to the semifinals of the 2015 Australian Open while still a teenager.
“All of a sudden, people say, ‘She’s a contender,’ ” Keys recalled. “It’s the next logical step: You made the semifinals, you should make a final. You make a final, you should win.
“Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.”
The rest of the year, she lost in her first or second match of a tournament nine times, though her results in the Grand Slams were better.
And with her profile soaring, so did the harassment on social media.
“I could go through my Twitter account right now and there would be 10 horrible messages,” Keys said.
“All of a sudden, I was getting all these messages that I was fat and ugly, and I wasn’t prepared for it.”
It took time for her to remind herself that the trolls were most likely gamblers who spewed vitriol because they were betting on her matches.
On the court, she needed to remind herself to trust the process and not obsess over individual wins and losses. This year she has made three finals, winning her second WTA title, and is currently ranked a career-best No 9.
At the Rio Games, she made it to the semifinals — then ran into two Grand Slam champions in a row in Angelique Kerber and Petra Kvitova, losing to both to miss out on a medal.
Keys, who withdrew from this week’s Connecticut Open with a neck injury, is set to be seeded eighth when the US Open starts on Monday — a key number because it means she can’t meet Williams or Kerber until the quarterfinals at the earliest.