MELBOURNE, Australia — Madison Keys surely didn’t think her first set at the 2026 Australian Open would be more complicated than the one she played to win the tournament in 2025.

That set, a 7-5 thriller against world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, won Keys her long-awaited maiden major and was the most cathartic of her career. But it was also a high-quality, hard-fought set in a vacuum.

Keys held serve in difficult games at 1-1 and 3-3. At 5-5, 30-30, she conjured a remarkable short-hop forehand winner down the line after a deep Sabalenka return, the kind that looks natural to the casual eye but is in fact preternatural. And on match point, when presented with a short ball, she went for the line with her inside-out forehand. Again, she found the target.

A year later, down 6-4 to world No. 92 Oleksandra Oliynykova in a first-set tiebreak, playing her first match as defending champion, Keys found the best attacking tennis of the Australian Open right where she left it on Rod Laver Arena.

She pounced on a short second serve, firing a forehand return winner down the line. She blasted a backhand winner down the line on the first shot after her serve at 5-6, then a forehand winner down the line for her plus-one at 6-6.

With a set point in hand, she took her opportunity with both hands, crowding a second serve and annihilating yet another winner, this time an inside-out forehand reminiscent of the one that won her last year’s tournament. Keys screamed in triumph and a relief, a celebration that goes further than any stat toward describing the intensity of the set. She cruised from there, to a 7-6(6), 6-1 win.

On paper, Oliynykova was a longshot to make the match competitive.

She was playing in her first main-draw match at a major. Her stilted, balletic service motion rarely produced a first serve bigger than 100 mph – it averaged 86 mph – while her second serves sometimes faltered below 70. The Ukrainian’s inexperience showed as she applauded practically every winner Keys hit, including aces, and gestured when a ball was out despite the use of electronic line-calling on Rod Laver Arena. Her box on the corner of the Australian Open’s show court was empty.

All this seemed like a recipe for a blowout loss. Instead, Oliynykova brought Keys to the brink of her abilities in the 70-minute first set. What Oliynykova lacked in power, she made up for with a rhythm-ruining blend of moonballs and scything forehand slices that seemed to clear the net by millimeters. Keys donated the first break of the match, double-faulting three times in a nightmarishly tight opening service game.

“I was obviously very nervous at the start,” Keys said with a laugh in her on-court interview. But the second break was all Oliynykova: the 25-year-old scraped back an overhead smash and a volley to bend a forehand pass just beyond Keys’ reach that actually did land in by a margin of millimeters.

On top of that, Oliynykova’s excellent defense wreaked havoc. On three occasions in the first set, her on-the-run lobs provoked Keys into missing smashes. A fourth lob, artfully flicked from one arm in an extended position on her backhand side, went for a clean winner.

Even when Keys retrieved both breaks of serve, the outcome of the set remained in doubt. This time, it was Keys’ opponent who shined on the 5-5, 30-30 point: the American finally put together a trademark succession of clean, offensive groundstrokes that had Oliynykova defending desperately. But the Ukrainian somehow slid into a forehand down the line with pace and weight that belied her slight frame, forcing an error from Keys and leaving her visibly impressed.

The set then arrived at the tiebreak, which took every ounce of Keys’ greatness to win. Oliynykova grabbed the first four points, consolidating that lead into two set points at 6-4, from which point Keys took over.

As in many matches between champion and underdog, Keys picked up speed in the second set as Oliynykova slowed. Dropping the match didn’t spoil Oliynykova’s day, though: she hung around after a warm hug with Keys at the net, beaming as she signed autographs and when Keys complimented her game. Though she acknowledged in her news conference that she perhaps hit too risky of a first serve at 6-4 in the tiebreak – finally breaching 100 mph on the radar gun – she added that playing Keys demanded such risks. “Her return is perfect,” Oliynykova said.

As for Keys, who struggled in losses against similarly unconventional players in Tatjana Maria and Laura Siegemund on the grass courts last year, she might just look back on this match as the one that unlocked her best tennis in Melbourne once more.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Tennis, Women's Tennis

2026 The Athletic Media Company