Madison Keys (born February 17, 1995) is an American professional tennis player. She has been ranked as high as world No. 5 by the WTA. Keys has won eleven career singles titles, including a major at the 2025 Australian Open. She was also the runner-up at the 2017 US Open.
Keys was inspired to play tennis after watching Venus Williams at Wimbledon. She turned professional on her 14th birthday, and a few months later became one of the youngest players to win a WTA Tour-level match. She had her breakthrough in 2015 by reaching the Australian Open semifinals as a teenager, and debuted in the top 10 of the WTA rankings in 2016. Keys reached the US Open final in 2017, losing to Sloane Stephens. Following years of injury struggles and weaker results, Keys won her first major title at the 2025 Australian Open, defeating world No. 2 Iga Świątek and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka consecutively.
Keys' playing style has allowed her to become a leader of American tennis, using a fast serve and powerful forehand. She plays well on all court surfaces, having at least one title per surface, and has reached the quarterfinals at every major.
Keys was born on February 17, 1995, in Rock Island, one of the Quad Cities in northwestern Illinois. Her parents Rick and Christine are both attorneys, and her father was a Division III All-American college basketball player at Augustana College. She has an older sister named Sydney and two younger sisters named Montana and Hunter, none of whom play tennis. Keys' passion for tennis started at a young age. Her interest in the sport arose from watching Wimbledon on television when she was four years old. Keys asked her parents for a white tennis dress like the one Venus Williams was wearing, and they offered to get her one if she started playing tennis. Her father said that after this bargain, "All [Madison] did was try to hit balls into the next yard — home runs."
Keys started playing tennis at the Quad-City Tennis Club in Moline. She began taking lessons regularly at seven and began competing in tournaments at the age of nine. When she was ten years old, she moved to Florida with her mother and younger sisters so that she could train at the Evert Tennis Academy founded by John Evert and also partly run by his sister, International Tennis Hall of Famer Chris Evert. At first, John said that he "thought she was very athletic, a raw talent physically. She definitely needed to be cleaned up with her strokes." Keys noted that her game was very different when she was starting out at the academy compared to how it is as a pro, saying, "I didn't like groundstrokes, I didn't like long points that much, so I would just run into the net and try and volley." Nonetheless, Keys's coaches had high hopes for her. Chris said, "At 12 years old, she's pretty much an all-court player; she's not one-dimensional, which is pretty rare in this day and age."
When Keys was 12 years old, she went 23–2 in her girls 12s matches, including a perfect 19–0 in 2007. Her most notable title was a victory at the 12-and-under Junior Orange Bowl. At the age of 13, Keys began competing in 18-and-under ITF events. In January 2009, she won the Copa del Café, a high-level Grade 1 tournament in Costa Rica, to become the first American winner of the girls' event in its 26-year history. Later that year, her coach John Evert remarked that, "She's got weapons at a very young age. Most of the top players in the world have weapons, but it takes some time to develop them. Madison at the age of 14 can hit her serve or her forehand as big as most of the girls, and some of the top girls, on the pro tour."
As a 15-year-old, Keys played in just five ITF Junior Circuit events, instead opting to play in eight ITF Pro Circuit events over the same period. Her best result that year was winning both the singles and doubles titles at the Grade B1 Pan American Closed ITF Championships, which is the highest level of regional tournament on the junior tour. After the 2011 US Open, Keys moved to the pro tour full-time. She was ranked No. 16 in the ITF junior rankings at the time, a personal best. At this stage of her career, she was already 5' 10", serving at 115 miles per hour (185 km/h), and could hit strong forehand and backhand winners.
2009–2012: WTA Tour match win at age 14
Keys turned pro in February 2009 on her 14th birthday. She made her WTA Tour debut a few months later at the Ponte Vedra Beach Championships, having played in only one previous professional tournament where she lost her only match. In her debut, she defeated world No. 81, Alla Kudryavtseva, in straight sets. At the age of 14 years and 48 days, she became the seventh-youngest player ever to win a WTA Tour-level match and the youngest since Martina Hingis in 1994. Top seed Nadia Petrova knocked Keys out of the tournament in the next round. Due to the tour's age restriction policy, she was unable to enter another WTA tournament that year. Nonetheless, Keys found another opportunity to play against the top professionals by participating in the World TeamTennis league as a member of the Philadelphia Freedoms. Still only 14 years old, she beat Serena Williams in a set to five games. Williams was ranked No. 2 in the world at the time and had just won Wimbledon earlier that month.
During her early years, Keys played mostly on the ITF Circuit, where she won three titles in singles and one in doubles. Her next opportunity to play on the WTA Tour came in March 2011, when she was awarded a wild card into the Miami Open. Keys was defeated by No. 41, Patty Schnyder, in the first round, despite having a chance to serve for the match. Several months later, Keys won an invitational playoff to earn one of the American wild card spots in the main draw of the US Open. She defeated fellow American Jill Craybas in her Grand Slam tournament debut to become the youngest match winner at the event in six years at the age of 16. Keys also won an invitational playoff to compete at the 2012 Australian Open but was unable to get past the first round.
2013: Top 50 debut, top 10 victory
Keys began the year ranked No. 149 in the world. Having made it to relatively few WTA main draws in previous years, Keys played only tour-level events in 2013. At the Sydney International, Keys reached the quarterfinals of a WTA event for the first time, defeating Lucie Šafářová and Zheng Jie, the two players who had beaten her in her first two majors. For the second straight year, Keys won the Australian Open Wildcard Playoff. At the Australian Open, she beat Casey Dellacqua and No. 30 Tamira Paszek to reach the third round, before bowing out to No. 5, Angelique Kerber. With this success, she entered the top 100 of the WTA rankings at No. 81 a month before turning 18.
In the clay-court season, Keys reached another quarterfinal at the Charleston Open before losing to Venus Williams, one of her childhood idols, in their first-ever meeting. She next played at the Madrid Open and defeated world No. 6 Li Na, not long after nearly beating her in Sydney earlier in the year. This was Keys's first victory over a top 10 opponent. Keys concluded the clay-court season with a second-round appearance in her French Open debut. At Wimbledon, she used a second consecutive third-round appearance to break into the top 50.
Keys had a relatively quiet stretch following Wimbledon. In October, she finished her season at the Japan Open in Osaka, where she reached her first WTA Tour semifinal. She lost to the eventual champion Samantha Stosur. After a successful year on the tour, Keys finished the year ranked No. 37, an improvement of over 100 places from the start of the season.
In Keys' second tournament of the year, she returned to the Sydney International and made her first Premier semifinal. She cruised past No. 11, Simona Halep, in the first round before losing to No. 9, Angelique Kerber. She next played at the Australian Open, but was upset by Zheng Jie in the second round after dropping a double break advantage in the final set. In February, Keys made her Fed Cup debut against Italy. She lost her only singles match to Camila Giorgi but managed to win the dead rubber doubles match with Lauren Davis as the United States lost the tie. Keys again participated in Fed Cup in April. The United States lost this tie to France 3–2 and were bounced from the top-tier World Group. Keys won her first Fed Cup match against Alizé Cornet but was unable to win her next singles match or the decisive doubles rubber with Sloane Stephens.