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From a teenage prodigy to a tour stalwart with “gnarly” injuries, Madison Keys’ road to Grand Slam glory has been long and complicated.<\/b><\/p>\n
The newly-crowned Australian Open champion broke through on the WTA Tour when she was just 14 and was instantly tipped as a future major winner.<\/p>\n
Now, a few weeks before her 30th birthday, the American has finally achieved her goal.<\/p>\n
Keys capped an impressive run at Melbourne Park with a shock win over two-time defending champion Aryna Sabalenka in Saturday’s final.<\/p>\n
“From a pretty young age, I felt like if I never won a Grand Slam then I wouldn’t have lived up to what people thought I should have been,” Keys said.<\/p>\n
“That was a pretty heavy burden to carry around.”<\/p>\n
Keys’ journey to the Melbourne title has not been easy.<\/p>\n
In April 2009, aged 14 years and 48 days, she became the youngest player since Martina Hingis in 1994 to win a Tour-level match.<\/p>\n
Six years later she reached the Australian Open semi-finals before going a step further at the 2017 US Open.<\/p>\n
But Keys froze in her first major final. She won just three games against Sloane Stephens in a match she thought of “endlessly for the past eight years”.<\/p>\n
Although she has reached five other major semi-finals since, Keys has battled injury problems and dropped out of the world’s top 50 in 2022<\/p>\n
“I had to go through some tough things,” said Keys, who will now rise to seventh in the world.<\/p>\n
“It forced me to look at myself in the mirror and try to work on the internal pressure I was putting on myself.<\/p>\n
“I finally got to the point where I was proud of myself and my career, with or without a Grand Slam. <\/p>\n
“I feel like letting go of that kind of internal talk gave me the ability to go out and play some really good tennis.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n