Jessica Pegula vs Madison Keys: WTA500 Adelaide final analysis

Four times more winners propelled Keys to a 9th career Tour title

Scheduled to start her 2025 Australian Open campaign in a few hours, Madison Keys (WTA #21) will ride a winning streak into a Major for the eighth time in her career, third time in Melbourne.

source: Madison Keys instagram

The 29-year old American is probably one of the most mentioned active players when those infamous lists of «Best players without a Slam» get discussed. Keys is still chasing a first big title, but it is undeniable that she has been consistently hitting peak form when Majors come around — or at least one or two weeks before them.

Remarkably, out of 9 career singles titles, Keys has clinched 7 of those wins in her last event prior to playing a Major!

Data from this fascinating stat is shown below and also incorporates the 2023 United Cup, won by Team USA and during which Keys registered a 4-0 record in singles action.

List of titles won by Madison Keys in her last event immediately before playing a Major and the results she obtained in that Major.

It was equally intriguing to find out that none of Keys’ titles in warm-up events originated a career breakthrough result during the following fornight. The best the American managed was to match a couple of previous bests — in 2022, she equalled her Australian Open semifinal of 2015; in 2023, matched her Wimbledon quarterfinal of 2015.

It this a bad omen for Keys’ chances at this year’s Australian Open?

Madison Keys: best result by Major

• Australian Open: semifinalist, 2015 and 2022

• Roland Garros: semifinalist, 2018

• Wimbledon: quarterfinalist, 2015 and 2023

• US Open: runner-up, 2017

Superstitions aside, Keys showed once again this week that, by virtue of her blistering power game, she can put the outcome of any match on her racquet and beat anyone.

In Adelaide, Keys eliminated Beatriz Haddad Maia (WTA #17), Jelena Ostapenko (WTA #15, seed 8), Daria Kasatkina (WTA #9, seed 3) and Liudmila Samsonova (WTA #27), before triumphing over top seed Jessica Pegula (WTA #7) 6-3, 4-6, 6-1 in the final, for her second title in the capital city of South Australia.

Looking at the final match stats, it is not difficult to understand why Pegula dropped to a 1-6 record in finals against fellow Americans. Keys blasted 4x more winners than Pegula, with the 36-9 score in that metric creating a colossal 27-point gap.