Madison Keys of the United States fell to China's Qinwen Zheng of China, losing the last seven games after jumping out to a 5-0 lead in the third set

New York (AFP) - Former Australian Open champion Madison Keys felt “scared” and as though “I couldn’t play tennis anymore,” she said Saturday after losing at the US Open.

Keys squandered a 5-0 lead in the third set, wasting a match point and dropping the last seven games to fall to Olympic gold medallist Zheng Qinwen of China 1-6, 7-6 (⁷⁄₃), 7-5.

“I obviously got off to a really good lead, and then I got really scared, like I couldn’t swing,” Keys said of the third-set implosion that had her banging her head with her racquet in frustration..

“At the end, I think she started playing better; I started playing poorly,” Keys said.

“Then I felt like I couldn’t play tennis anymore. It just felt like it was a much bigger deal than just playing a tennis match all of a sudden.”

Once touted as the successor to the Williams sisters, Keys has been open about seeking therapy in the past, saying she had come to terms with potentially never winning a Grand Slam title.

But eight years after she made the US Open final in 2017 she reached her second major title match and walked away with the Australian Open crown in 2025, overcoming Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka in the final two rounds.

Keys has not reached those heights this year, but she had a 33-14 record coming into the US Open and won a Wimbledon warmup tournament in June. She did not get beyond the round of 16 at any Grand Slam in 2026.

“I feel like I’ve been struggling for awhile now,” she said. “I’m going to have to make some sort of changes.

“I just kind of keep pushing it off and pushing it off just because that’s how the tennis world works,” Keys said. “It’s just to the point where I actually need to do something about it.”