Before she won her first grand slam tournament at the Australian Open in January, Madison Keys had spent more than a year talking to a therapist about her life rather than just her tennis career. “When I’d gone to see sports psychologists in the past it had been a little tunnel-focused on routines and big moments on the court,” she says on a sleepy Sunday afternoon in London. “So being able to talk to someone about broader life philosophies helped me get to the root of why I was feeling that way instead of just being uber-focused on decisive moments in a match.”
The 30-year-old American, who is ready for another tilt at Wimbledon, remembers some of the wayward suggestions that specialist sports psychiatrists would advise her to follow at crucial stages of a match.
