MADISON KEYS’ VICTORY: EXTRA LARGE, NO CARRY-ON ALLOWED

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For most professional tennis players, hauling oversized baggage through airports is just part of the job.

But when Madi­son Keys board­ed her flight home from Mel­bourne, she had an extra piece of lug­gage unlike any she’d car­ried before: the Aus­tralian Open tro­phy.

“It had to go under the plane,” Keys told CNN Sport. “It’s too big for the over­head bins, and there weren’t enough seats to put it next to me, but it made it in one piece!”

Keys’ first Grand Slam title was years in the mak­ing. Once hailed as the future of Amer­i­can ten­nis after break­ing onto the tour at just 14, she reached a career-high rank­ing of No. 7 in 2016. Deep runs at major tour­na­ments followed—a semi­fi­nal at the Aus­tralian Open in 2015, a heart­break­ing U.S. Open final loss in 2017, and more semi­fi­nal fin­ish­es in 2018, but the ulti­mate prize remained elu­sive. Between 2018 and 2022, she reached just one Grand Slam quar­ter­fi­nal, leav­ing many to won­der if her time had passed.

Keys her­self had those doubts. “I felt like I should have won one by now,” she admit­ted. “That was becom­ing a men­tal block for me, a bur­den.”

But some­thing shift­ed. “I final­ly freed myself from that pres­sure. It wasn’t that I want­ed it any less, but I was able to sep­a­rate my self-worth from wins and loss­es. That gave me the free­dom to just go for it.”

And go for it she did. With a com­mand­ing per­for­mance in the Aus­tralian Open final, Keys stunned two-time defend­ing cham­pi­on Ary­na Sabalen­ka to cap­ture her maid­en Grand Slam title. The vic­to­ry makes her the fourth-old­est woman to win her first Grand Slam in the Open Era, and just three weeks shy of her 30th birth­day.

Keys’ tri­umph capped an unfor­get­table few months, which also includ­ed mar­ry­ing her long­time part­ner and coach, Bjorn Fratan­ge­lo. When asked how her wed­ding stacks up against win­ning her first Slam, she laughed: “The wed­ding is still def­i­nite­ly at the top of the leader­board, but this is a very close sec­ond.”

Of course, work­ing and trav­el­ing with your spouse isn’t always smooth sail­ing. “The worst part?” Keys joked. “Hav­ing to admit he’s right — a lot.”

For now, she can enjoy know­ing she was right about one thing: she always had what it took to be a Grand Slam cham­pi­on.