Taking the random route
Nervous energy is hard enough to rein in and channel into success.
So the prospect of cluttering the mind with needless superstitions makes no sense to the pragmatic Madison Keys.
Casual as you like in interviews, the American admitted that calm exterior often hid a nervous mindset on court. Not that it showed in a comfortable 6-4, 6-3 victory over Luksika Kumkhum.
Keys’ no-fuss approach is the antithesis of superstitious: “I just try to make everything as random as possible so that I don't get stuck doing the same thing. There is just so many things that could go wrong and things change. So I never want to feel extra nerves because something got thrown off.”
It is a rationale that fits well with her new coach David Taylor’s outlook.
In just her second match under the Australian’s guidance, Keys did not complicate matters on Court 12.
“He has been really good for me just because I like how we focus a lot on what I do well and how to use that more and get better at using that,” Keys said. “But also working on the weaknesses that I do have and tweaking those to not really think of them so much as weaknesses but just make them solid to set up for my strengths.”
World No.91 Kumkhum reached the third round of the Australian Open this year as a qualifier, with her whipping double-fisted blows off both wings depriving opponents of time.
It was a game style which could work effectively on the grass, as Russian Vitalia Diatchenko had shown only a day before with her upset of Maria Sharapova.
Up to the challenge
But after two prior defeats to the Thai player, who had never won a match on grass until this week, there was no reason for Keys to expect she would lose a third.
Much like her first round opponent, Ajla Tomljanovic, Kumkhum was an aggressive player who had the tools to rattle the No.10 seed. But for the second time in as many matches, Keys handled it with aplomb.
When Kumkhum landed the first break for 3-2 Keys did not flinch. She immediately broke back and went on to a second break to take the set as she drilled back-to-back return winners down the line at the 38-minute mark.
Where a full repertoire of heavy shots at her disposal had often led to an error-strewn undoing in the past, Keys had made inroads on her consistency, at the Grand Slam stages in particular.
After reaching her maiden Slam final in New York last September, she reached the Australian Open quarter-finals and a surprise Roland-Garros semi-final on her least favourite surface. A deep run at SW19, on a surface she had already claimed two titles on, was now very much on the radar.
Williams on the radar
Keys closed out the straight-sets result over Kumkhum with 34 winners. Russian world No.120 Evgeniya Rodina is next.
That nervous energy will be there regardless of Rodina’s ranking, no result of any pedantic routines.
Find a way past the Russian and another tour mum looms as a fourth round roadblock, seven-time champion Serena Williams, a player whose hunger for success the fast-maturing Keys felt she now shared.
“I think the mentality might be there,” she said. “But the numbers are obviously very different.”
