page_title: Madison Keys
section_title: Playing style
hierarchical_section_title: Madison Keys / Playing style
caption_attribution_description: English: Madison Keys serving at 2016 Aegon Classic where she won the title
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: Keys has described her own game as "I have a pretty good serve and a pretty good forehand, but what people notice the most is how hard I can hit the ball and how much power is behind my shots." She has been listed at 5' 10" since she was 14 years old, which helped her play in pro events from a young age. She has used her tall frame to develop a style of play around hitting big serves and powerful groundstrokes on both the forehand and backhand sides. Keys's junior coach Chris Evert compared her level of power at 18 years old to that of Serena Williams, saying "I can almost say she almost matches Serena [Williams'] serve as far as power. Out of all the players out there, she comes the closest to Serena's serve. The power off both sides is tremendous for someone that young." Keys is particularly known for hitting strong forehand groundstrokes. Former world No. 1 Karolína Plíšková, who also has an elite forehand, and 2017 US Open champion Sloane Stephens have both said that Keys has the best forehand in the game.
  Keys is an aggressive baseliner. She does not go to the net too often, instead relying on her power to hit forehand and backhand winners to end points. The Aggression Score metric, which measures a player's aggression based on how quickly they finish points, rated Keys among the top 10% of all players. Keys's biggest weakness is her inability to control her power at times. Her match losses are often due to her opponents provoking her into hitting too many unforced errors while she is aiming for winners.
  Although Keys prefers playing on hard courts, where she reached her first Grand Slam final and won her first Premier 5 title, she has had success on all three main surfaces used on tour. Two out of her five WTA titles have come on grass courts. Her least favorite surface is clay, which is typically regarded as too slow to suit players like Keys whose style revolves around hitting with power. Nonetheless, she has won one title on clay at the 2019 Charleston Open, reached one Premier 5 final on clay, and also made it to the semifinals at the French Open.
  Keys uses her strong serve to dominate her service games. In 2016, she finished third in percentage of points won on serve behind only Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka, among all players with at least ten tour-level matches. That same year, she also hit the third-most aces with 300, trailing Serena who had 324 and Plíšková who led the tour with 530. Keys could serve at more than 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) when she was 14, and was clocked at up to 126 miles per hour (203 km/h) on the road to her first WTA title in 2014. Although that serve is not recognized because there was no official serve speed data at the tournament, the WTA has recorded her serving at 124 miles per hour (200 km/h) at the US Open, which was good for the fifth fastest serve in 2015.
  On multiple occasions, Keys has been recorded hitting groundstrokes at speeds that are comparable to, if not faster than the top men's tennis players. At the 2014 French Open, Keys had the fastest average groundstroke speed of any player at 78.9 miles per hour (127.0 km/h). For comparison, Novak Djokovic had the fastest groundstrokes on the men's side with an average speed of 77.1 miles per hour (124.1 km/h). The Game Insight Group analyzed Australian Open data over a five-year period from 2012 to 2016 and found that Keys had the second-fastest average forehand and backhand speeds of all players. Her 78.9 miles per hour (127.0 km/h) forehands trailed only Tomáš Berdych, and her 72.8 miles per hour (117.2 km/h) backhands trailed only Li Na. Out of just her fastest 1% of shots, Keys hit an average forehand at 97.1 miles per hour (156.3 km/h), which was stronger than Lleyton Hewitt and close to David Ferrer. Her fastest backhands had an average of 90.0 miles per hour (144.8 km/h), which was faster than that of Bernard Tomic and close to Nick Kyrgios, both of whom have a reputation for being able to hit powerful groundstrokes.
caption: Keys serving
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