Be brave. Go for it. Those were the mantras Madison Keys turned to as she confronted the most significant points of her tennis career, trapped in the cauldron of a third set that was tied at 5-all, 30-all in the Australian Open final against two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday. No reason to be anything but aggressive now, Keys thought, per the AP. No reason to worry—as the American long did along the journey from prodigy at age 12 to major champion less than a month before her 30th birthday—about what would happen if things didn't quite work out.
"I just kept saying, 'Be brave.' And, 'Go for it.' I kind of just kept repeating that. That was really my goal for the day—to just be proud, no matter a win or a loss," Keys said in an interview with the AP after winning her first Grand Slam title with a 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 victory over the No. 1-ranked Sabalenka in Rod Laver Arena. "I went after it, every single point. And if I missed it and I just didn't execute, I could live with that. I didn't want to have any sort of regret that I was passive and I missed. (Then) it could have been something where I thought: 'I should have done something else,'" Keys said, her hands clasped as she recalled what transpired about two hours earlier. "So I kind of just kept saying that, over and over."
- The full story traces her career and her change in philosophy.
- On the men's side: Jannik Sinner claimed his second consecutive Australian Open championship on Sunday, never facing a single break point and using his complete game to outplay and frustrate Alexander Zverev for a 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-3 victory in the final. Sinner, a 23-year-old Italian, is the youngest man to leave Melbourne Park with the trophy two years in a row since Jim Courier in 1992-93. The AP has the details of the match.
(More
Australian Open stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
