Australian Open 2025: Double trouble – Madison Keys in test of nerves as Iga Swiatek bounces into Open semis

Madison Keys, a chronic majors underachiever, faces Iga Swiatek in the semi-finals. Swiatek has the awkwardness of a cricketer who’s claimed a catch before replays showed the ball bounced.

Madison Keys during her win over Elina Svitolina. Picture: Michael Klein

Madison Keys’s hopes of winning a major skyrocketed when Ash Barty retired.

She couldn’t lay a hand on the Queenslander. Barty sliced her and diced her, picking her apart with stock balls and zooters, working her over like Shane Warne bowling leggies to Daryl Cullinan.

Keys was Barty’s bunny. “A nightmare,” was her description of her humiliating straight sets loss in their 2022 Australian Open semi-final. Keys’s laser-beam groundstrokes are a handful when the ball is in her waist-high hitting zone but she collapsed against Barty’s variations, primarily the svelte ability to skim a ball ankle-height. Keys would struggle to win a major for as long as Barty was on tour.

Now the coast is more clear.

Keys faces five-time major champion Iga Swiatek in Thursday’s semi-finals. Swiatek carries the awkwardness of a Test cricketer who’s claimed a catch before video replays showed the ball bounced. In this case, twice. Swiatek clearly failed to retrieve a drop shot during her 6-1 6-2 drubbing of American Emma Navarro.

The naked eye suspected a double-bounce; replays confirmed it. Navarro was incredulous, the umpire Eva Asderaki-Moore was blind as a bat, Swiatek unapologetic. Virat Kohli would have been blowing up if the Border-Gavaskar Trophy was at stake.

Poland’s Iga Swiatek stretches to return a shot against American Emma Navarro in their Australian Open quarter-finals match on Rod Laver Arena Picture: Mark Stewart

Double, double, toil and trouble. Video killed the Polish star but she pleaded naivety. “Honestly, I didn’t see the replay after this point,” Swiatek said. “I didn’t look up for the screens because I wanted to stay focused and didn’t want this point to stay in my head.

“I wasn’t sure if it was a double bounce or I hit it with my frame. It was hard to say because I was full sprinting. I don’t remember even seeing the contact point. I don’t know. Sometimes you don’t really look when you hit the ball.”

She added: “I wasn’t sure. I thought this is the umpire’s job to call it. I was also waiting for the VAR but I didn’t see it. I was already focused on the next one. Honestly, this is the first time something like that happened to me.”

Without Barty nipping at her heels, what’s Keys’s remaining weakness? Perhaps the most insurmountable: nerves.

She’s a better player than umpteen recent major winners but has the unhappy, unhelpful knack of losing her bundle when important matches are there to be won.

Exhibit A: As a red-hot favourite against the unseeded Sloane Stephens in the 2017 US Open final, Keys capitulated in a nerve-addled, error-prone 6-3 6-0 defeat in 61 minutes.

Exhibit B: She led Aryna Sabalenka 6-0 5-3 in the 2023 US Open semi-finals before nerves rattled her navigation system and she lost.

“It sucks,” she said in New York City. “My mental health is definitely a lot better when I’m playing with lower expectations, not putting as much pressure on myself and just kind of having a better approach to the game. I’m really just trying to make it a lot more fun and focus on that.”

Thursday’s Open semi-finals are Sabalenka versus Paula Badosa and Keys against Swiatek. Sounds fun. A resident of Orlando, Florida, Keys has enough sentimental support in the locker room for a Disney movie. Everyone seems to like her.

She’s been stymied by injuries over the years, she’s never fully capitalised on her potential, she turns 30 next month and a belated slam will be welcomed by the majority of peers.

“You just have to do your best and leave it all out there,” she said after beating Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina on Wednesday, 3-6 6-3 6-4. “As long as I can do that, no matter what happens, I can walk away with my head held high.”

Keys won her first tour match aged 14. She was a major champion in the making. She’s still trying to make it. “If I could go back, I’d try to enjoy it a little bit more and maybe try not to put as much pressure on yourself that it had to be right now,” she says.

“There’s been a handful of times in my career where it kind of felt like if it didn’t happen right now, would it ever happen?

“I’m getting to the point where I’m starting to appreciate my career for what it has been. It doesn’t have to have a grand slam in order for me to look at it and say, ‘I’ve done a really good job’.”

She adds: “While that’s obviously still the goal, there have been periods of my career where it felt like if I didn’t win one, then I hadn’t done enough and didn’t live up to my potential and all of that.

“I think that took a lot of fun out of the game and there were times where it felt paralysing out on the court because it felt as if I needed it to happen instead of giving myself the opportunity to go out and potentially do it.”