US OPEN

August 25, 2025

Madison Keys

Press Conference

R. ZARAZUA/M. Keys

6-7, 7-6, 7-5

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Madison, tough luck today. Did you sense in the warm-up or anything that you might not have your best today?

MADISON KEYS: No, my warm-up was fine. I mean, I just feel like from pretty early on in the first set it was pretty apparent that I wasn't playing great tennis today.

Q. Could you give us a little more detail about how that feels to you at the time. What feels like is missing at the time?

MADISON KEYS: I feel like today I was just, for the first time in a while, where my nerves really got the better of me, and it kind of became a little bit paralyzing. I felt like I was just slow, I wasn't seeing things the way that I wanted to, which I feel like resulted in a lot of bad decisions and lazy footwork.

So I feel like that's kind of the summary.

Q. Wondering if that was an emotion you were feeling in the days leading up to the match, because this will be the first US Open as a Grand Slam champion. Maybe that pressure and expectation building up over the last week or just kind of hit you all at once during the match?

MADISON KEYS: I think it was probably building a little bit. The reality is it usually builds a little bit. You always kind of feel first-round jitters, and as the day is getting closer, feeling a little bit more and more nervous.

But I feel like for whatever reason, today I just couldn't separate myself from the, I guess -- and it's more than just saying, I want to win, but just feeling like winning matters just way too much, and I just couldn't quite separate myself from that. Then once you start playing badly, it just kind of all snowballs.

Q. How would you describe your opponent, how she played, and what your thoughts are on her game?

MADISON KEYS: I mean, she made a ton of balls, and she reset the point a lot. I mean, kudos to her for making me play a lot of balls today. I mean, she's a tricky player. I mean, I felt like she was kind of resetting the point over and over and over again and just kind of stayed tough in really important points.

Q. It's been a career year for you, 2025. It's weird to go out in the first round of a major. But are you able to kind of make sense of that, the fact you have gone out first round, this has still been a career year?

MADISON KEYS: Um, it's hard obviously. I've had a lot of success, have probably won the most matches I've ever won in a year, but then losing today -- and I think it's more so, like, the way that I played today, it kind of sucks. But I think big picture, again, if you told me at the beginning of the year what I was signing up for, I would obviously say yes.

So that's allegedly the beauty of the sport (smiling).

Q. It's kind of ironic in a way, because your winning in Melbourne was all largely based on just go out and do it and not wanting to win. I guess my question would be: When that demon comes up where you want it so much, how do you try and detach from that and deal with that in the best of cases?

MADISON KEYS: I think the difficult part of sports is that you can't ever recreate a scenario as hard as we try to. And I had, you know, a lot of time at home, training, like, I just had a really great offseason where I was able to build, have a base, not only on the court but mentally.

I feel like as the year has gone on and on and on, there's been a lot of matches, there hasn't been a lot of time to actually reset and have training blocks and just have time where you're not competing to really kind of get back to life and, like, the real balance of it all.

So I feel like it was a lot easier at the beginning of the year, because it's the start of the year, everything is fresh. And now I feel like there's been moments where you've been on the road longer, you've played a lot of matches, you haven't had a lot of days off. Those are kind of the days where things are just a little bit harder. I think that those are kind of the times when your bad habits are the ones that kind of rear their head.