page_title: Madison Keys
section_title: 2015: Major semifinal, top 20
hierarchical_section_title: Madison Keys / Professional career / 2015: Major semifinal, top 20
caption_attribution_description: Madison Keys
context_page_description: Madison Keys is an American professional tennis player. She achieved a career-high ranking of No. 7 in the world in October 2016 and has been consistently ranked inside the top 25 by the Women's Tennis Association since early 2015. Keys has played in one Grand Slam tournament final at the 2017 US Open, and also competed at the 2016 WTA Finals. She has won five WTA tournaments, all at the Premier level. Her biggest title came at the 2019 Cincinnati Open, a Premier 5 event.
  Known for having a fast serve and one of the most powerful forehands in the game, Keys has used her aggressive playing style to become one of the leaders of the next generation of American tennis alongside Sloane Stephens and CoCo Vandeweghe. She debuted in the top 10 of the WTA rankings in 2016, becoming the first American woman to realize this milestone since Serena Williams seventeen years earlier. When Keys and Stephens faced off against each other in the 2017 US Open final, they snapped a streak of no American women aside from the Williams sisters appearing in a Grand Slam singles final since 2005.
context_section_description: In the off-season, Keys began working with former world No. 1 Lindsay Davenport as well as her husband Jon Leach. With her new coaching team, Keys made her breakthrough into the upper echelon of women's tennis at the Australian Open. She upset reigning Wimbledon champion and No. 4 Petra Kvitová in straight sets in the third round. In the quarterfinals, Keys got a second opportunity to face off against Venus Williams, who was ranked No. 18 in the world. She defeated Venus for the first time in a tight three set match, despite injuring her left thigh in the middle of the second set. This set up a clash with world No. 1 Serena Williams in the semifinals. After a very tight first set, Keys ultimately lost in straight sets. After the match, Serena, who eventually went on to capture the title, spoke of a bright future for Keys, saying, "It was an honor for me to play someone who will be No. 1 in the future." With her first major semifinal, Keys climbed into the top 20 for the first time.
  Keys was unable to carry her momentum through the early-year hard-court season. Nonetheless, she continued to impress once the clay court season came around. She reached the final at the Charleston Open, losing to Angelique Kerber after conceding a 4–1 lead in the third set. As the 16th seed at the French Open, Keys made it to the third round before falling to 23rd seed Timea Bacsinszky in straight sets. She then continued her series of strong performances at majors by reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.
  At the US Open, Keys advanced to the fourth round, where she was defeated by Serena Williams at a major for the second time this year. Keys finished the season with a high enough ranking to qualify for the inaugural WTA Elite Trophy, a year-end tournament similar to the top-tier WTA Finals for the top-ranked players who did not qualify for those higher level finals. Keys finished in second place in her three-person round-robin group, ahead of Zheng Saisai whom she beat and behind top overall seed Venus Williams whom she lost to in a close match. As the group winner, Venus was the only player to advance to the finals and ultimately won the tournament. After the season was over, Keys split from her coaching team in order to find a full-time coach, a role Davenport was unable to fulfill due to commitments to her family and to her job as a commentator.
caption: Keys at the 2015 Italian Open
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D300S", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:06:17 12:12:11", "Image Artist": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "356", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "1012", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1126", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4276", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/2000", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "320", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:05:10 12:45:44", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:05:10 12:45:44", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "300", "EXIF SubSecTime": "75", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "75", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "75", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3798", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2805", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "980", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "450", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}