Keys admits to losing focus after suffering shock defeat by Rodina
Madison Keys blamed her mind drifting towards a last-16 tie with Serena Williams, as she added her name to the list of top seeds knocked out of Wimbledon.
Keys was beaten in three sets by the world No120 Evgeniya Rodina in a match that should have been wrapped up much sooner.
Rodina was 4-0 up with four break points in the second set, having already taken the first, but Keys dug deep and managed to claw her way back, first to level the set, and then remarkably, to win it 7-5.
The momentum had swung, and the American looked to have got the better of the Russian. But then she became wasteful. Keys made 48 unforced errors in the match, compared to Rodina’s 11 and, on serve, Keys lost seven games.
Afterwards, she blamed the poor result on her concentration. “I think today was a massive mishandling of nerves,” she said.
“I felt good, I was up 5-2 and then I feel like I kind of let my mind go away and played a couple of sloppy games. All of a sudden it’s five-all, and that’s when the nerves hit me.”
The 10th seed lost nine games in a row and said she had been distracted by the thought of playing Serena Williams in the next round.
“I came in here [to the media room] the other day and it was like ‘so if you win, you’ll play this person’ and I think that kept being in the back of my mind.”
When asked to clarify if she meant Serena Williams, she said: “Yes, yes. I think that’s something that with experience I have to be able to completely push aside and not think about.”
The match went from looking like a routine victory for Keys, at 5-2 up in the first set, to an epic upset from Rodina at 4-0 and a set up in the second, to an even bigger comeback by Keys, who took the second set 7-5. In the decider, it seemed that neither could take a real hold of the match, both being broken and then breaking back.
Rodina huffed and puffed and while there were occasional shouts of Russian encouragement towards the 29-year-old, “Come on Maddie” was much louder.
Rodina was stoic in her defence and despite needing a medical time out for a thigh strain in the third set, she won it 6-4 to set up a last-16 meeting with Williams.
She showed little emotion during the game while Keys screamed, hit the grass and slumped to the ground on multiple occasions.
Afterwards though, Rodina had a beaming smile as she signed tennis balls and posed for pictures with fans.
Keys was positive, however, that next time she would have a different mindset. “Right now sucks,” she said. “But I think the awareness is there, when maybe before it wasn’t, which is good. But, I mean, it still happened, so it still sucks.”
Karolina Pliskova ensured Simona Halep is not the only top 10 seed remaining in the women’s competition after the former world No1 survived a scare from Romanian Mihaela Buzarnescu.
As the second set unfolded on a humid Court No1, it looked as if the Czech player, seeded seventh, would be joining Venus Williams and Keys on the casualty list as Buzarnescu went 6-3, 1-0 up.
But the 30-year-old Buzarnescu started to tire. The turning point of the match came when Pliskova held her nerve to win the tie-break for the second set 6-3 before taking the third 6-1.
She next plays the Dutchwoman Kiki Bertens.