Banishing The Inner Critic

How Madison Keys Learned To Care Less and Win More

Madison Keys celebrates with the trophy after winning the Australian Open final [Jaimi Joy/Reuters]

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At the highest level, the tennis court is a crucible for the psyche. Unlike footballers, boxers, or golfers, tennis-players compete alone, with nobody to talk to (unless you count shouting at their box). As a player, you can have the best coach, the most supportive team, a loving family–but once you step onto court, it’s all on you. It’s a wonder they don’t buckle at the knees and start weeping the moment they walk out.

The psychological intensity of tennis gives rise to powerful stories, and last month’s Australian Open provided a fine example. The women’s tournament was won by the American, Madison Keys (surely a name from a Martin Amis novel). It was a happy event. Rarely has the acclaim for a champion been so universal and so joyful. This was for two reasons: first, that Keys is generally agreed to be one of the nicest players on the tour; second, that until then she had seemed doomed to perpetual disappointment.

Keys is 29: in tennis terms, a veteran, an old-timer. Yet until now she had never won a Grand Slam tournament. Of course, plenty of top players never do, but Keys had been tipped to win one for fifteen years or more. She was a child prodigy, one of the youngest ever to win a match on the WTA tour, aged 14. She had a strong serve and a forehand of devastating power. Everyone in the sport said she was destined for greatness. In 2015 she reached the semi-finals of the Australian Open, aged 19. She lost to Serena Williams, the eventual champion, then in her pomp. Williams said afterwards, "It was an honour for me to play someone who will be No. 1 in the future."

But over the years to come, while Keys reached the top ten and often progressed to the final stages of Grand Slams, she never won one. At first, it was older players like Serena standing in her way. Then it was younger players passing her on the way up. Her most devastating defeat came in 2023, when she lost a very tight match to Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open, after serving for the match. Sabalenka, three years younger than Keys, went on to win the tournament - her first major - and become world number one.

Despite her talents, Keys didn’t seem to have the mental strength of the very top players. She got visibly nervous in big matches, and wobbled on big points. As she approached the end of her twenties, Keys grew increasingly aware that she might never fulfil what others had been calling her destiny since she was 11 years old. “As I had gotten older and gotten close and it didn’t happen… It was almost a panic,” she said. That made her play worse. By 2024, tennis-watchers had begun to conclude, with a shake of the head, that her time would never come.

At the start of this year’s Australian Open, Keys was barely considered a contender at all. But she made it to the semi-final, where, to widespread surprise, she beat the world number two, Iga Świątek. In the final, Keys came up against Sabalenka, world number one, again. Everyone knew how this would go. Keys would put up a good fight, and maybe win a set. Then the doubts would creep in. She would stiffen, start making errors, and allow the imperious Sabalenka to see her off. But it didn’t turn out that way. She played fearlessly, exploiting the full potential of that forehand. In the deciding set, she blew Sabalenka off the court, to become the oldest first-time women’s Australian Open champion.

Afterwards, Keys spoke very honestly and eloquently about her journey to this victory. In the year prior to the tournament, she had, together with her new coach, who is also her husband, decided to take a different attitude to her game. Instead of playing in a tightly controlled way - and then beating herself up after she lost because she was playing too tightly - she would play more instinctively, unleashing that fearsome forehand, and accepting that sometimes she’d hit too hard and too far. She might lose playing that way, but at least she’d lose playing her way.

At the same time, Keys underwent therapy. Not just sports psychology, which is largely about focus in the moment, but a deep investigation of her emotional and mental state. She came out of it much more at ease with herself, and a better player. Crucially, it helped her to realise that if she never won a Grand Slam, she could still be happy. It would be great to win one, of course. But she now truly believed that, despite what everyone had led her to believe since she was a kid, and despite what she had internalised, winning a tennis Grand Slam wasn’t actually the metric by which she passed or failed at life.

“I’m really proud of myself,” said Keys. “I didn’t always believe I could get back to this point. But to be able to do it and win, it means the world to me.” In a sense, though, the reason she prevailed is that she had come to realise it didn’t mean the world.

Timothy Gallwey, in his classic book on sports psychology, The Inner Game of Tennis, wrote, “The secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.” Madison Keys found success by learning to care less about success, a paradox which resonates throughout sport and beyond, and which is intimately related to the way we criticise ourselves…