Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Madison Keys She plans to walk into the tunnel at Rod Laver Arena during a quiet moment when no one is watching and have her name photographed alongside the other Australian Open champions.
After defeating the No. 1 Alina Sabalenka in last year’s final Melbourne Park Ji-sung wins first victory grand slam When Keys won the championship, she imagined the moment when she would return to the court for the first time as the defending champion.
“I always remember walking through that tunnel and seeing all the names,” she said Friday, two days before the first major of the year. “It was a little nervous moment where I was like, ‘Wow, I’m going to go there.'”
“I haven’t seen my name in the tunnel yet. I wish I could go in when no one else was around so I could take a picture and send it to my mom.”
Before facing the media in Melbourne, she couldn’t help but notice other evidence of her breakthrough victory.
“There’s a really cool picture of me holding the trophy,” Case said. “It’s something you dream about in your career to see this first hand.”
The 30-year-old American says it’s easy to look back on the past 12 months and think everything was perfect, but “you also think, ‘Wow, I almost lost.'”
“I was down match point. So many three-set matches. There were some ugly matches. I think it just made everything a little bit better, just because it wasn’t without its problems.”
Keys ended Sabalenka’s 20-match winning streak at the Australian Open after winning a warm-up match in Adelaide in 2025. At 29 years old, she is the oldest first-time women’s champion in the history of the event. She also set a player record for the longest gap between the previous two Grand Slam finals – her first being the 2017 U.S. Open.
The Australian Open victory propelled her into the top five the following month. However, after her breakthrough, she was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the French Open, the third round of Wimbledon, and a nervous exit in the first round of the US Open. At the WTA Finals at the end of the season, she lost two group stage matches.
Sabalenka, meanwhile, admitted on Friday that losing to Keys here last year was tough.
“She hit me unbelievably and hit me so hard. It took me a little while to recover,” she said. “Then we had games. I corrected my mistakes in those games.
“For this AO, I didn’t really pay attention to last year’s results, but I certainly hope to do a little better than last year!”
Sabalenka, who beat Keys in the quarter-finals last week to win the Brisbane International, will face wildcard entry Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah of France in the first round on Sunday night.
Keys also lost in the quarter-finals in their title defense in Adelaide earlier this week. But she’s taking it in stride as she prepares first for another career move: defending her Grand Slam title.
“Even though I’ve been touring for a long time, this is still my first experience,” she said. “I really just wanted to soak in all the really cool and fun parts.”
Keys is seeded ninth and will face Ukraine’s Oleksandra Olynikova on the other side of the draw from Sabalenka.
“Yes, I’m sure I’ll be very nervous on the court,” she said, “but I don’t think I’ve ever been on the court in the first round of a Grand Slam without being nervous.”
___
More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis