The Evolution Of Rising Star Madison Keys

After a breakthrough season, the young American is taking matters into her own hands.

- Stephen Tignor

Before her first press conference of 2016, Madison Keys walked into the interview room at the Australian Open with a baseball cap pulled backwards over her head, a string of earrings down each lobe and a tiny silver stud in her nose. Her hair, still wet after a shower, hung down over her shoulders. Earlier that afternoon, after shaking off some rust and quieting a few butterflies, Keys had won her opening-round match at the year’s first major, and she couldn’t help flashing her trademark toothy grin as she leaned forward to banter with half a dozen members of the U.S. media.

It was a new year, and while these reporters had been chronicling Keys’ every move since her days as a forehand-pulverizing prodigy from Florida, this was in many ways a new player who sat before them.

Over the previous 12 months, Keys had cracked the Top 20 on tour and made herself a threat at the Grand Slam tournaments. Along the way, she had made many American tennis fans believe that there might actually be a future for the sport in this country after Serena Williams retires.

Yet in the off-season, Keys had surprised the tennis world by splitting with former No. 1 Lindsay Davenport, the coach who many credited with her breakthrough. She hired a new, full-time team. Keys would be 21 the following month—had she left her slyly, shyly sarcastic teenage self behind? Maybe. Or maybe not. Asked how her new coach, former ATP tour pro Jesse Levine, was “adjusting to women’s tennis,” Keys’ grin narrowed to a wry smirk.

“He’s been fine…so far,” she says with an ironic twinkle in her eye. “There’s been a couple of times when he hits super, super spinny, and I’m like, ‘You can’t do that. No one [on the WTA tour] hits like that. Please stop.’”