Madison Keys' Thrilling Comeback at the US Open
NEW YORK — Madison Keys walked to the brink, stared down five match points, and refused to leave Court 17 quietly.
In the match of the US Open so far, the No. 22 seed produced a wild, nerve-jangling comeback to beat Anna Bondar 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (5), clawing back from 5-2 down in the deciding set and surviving a barrage of match points before turning the night into her own.
A third set on the edge
At 5-2 in the third, Bondar, ranked No. 73 in the PIF WTA Rankings, stood on the verge of the biggest win of her Grand Slam career. The crowd sensed it. Keys could feel it. The scoreboard screamed it.
Then the tension hit.
Serving for the match, Bondar tightened. Her first two match points dissolved with back-to-back double faults, the kind of brutal lapse that can haunt a player for weeks. Keys, who had been searching for rhythm, suddenly had oxygen.
She broke to close the gap to 5-3, but the danger didn’t disappear. Serving to stay in the tournament, she quickly trailed 15-40. Two more match points. Two more chances for Bondar to finish the job.
Keys went to her biggest weapon. The forehand.
She ripped one winner right on the line. Then another. Deuce. Court 17 erupted, sensing the shift. Bondar earned a fifth match point in that game, only for Keys to erase it with yet another forehand winner before finally holding serve.
From there, Keys surged. She snatched the next two games to move ahead 6-5, suddenly the player dictating, striking freely, the earlier nerves washed away. Bondar steadied herself long enough to hold and drag the contest into a 10-point tiebreak, but the emotional balance of the match had already tilted.
Forehand fury in the breaker
The tiebreaker brought one last twist.
Bondar, to her credit, didn’t fold. She regrouped, jumped out to a 5-3 lead, and again pushed Keys towards the exit. The noise, the stakes, the fatigue — all of it pressed in.
Keys answered with pure aggression.
Four straight forehand winners. Each one heavier than the last. Each one landing with the certainty of a player who had decided she was not going home. In a flash, 3-5 became 7-5. The crowd roared with every strike, sensing they were watching a player swing her way out of trouble.
From there, Keys didn’t let go. She took the final three points of the breaker to close out the 7-6 (5) set, sealing the comeback and her place in the third round.
Match point fittingly ended on that same shot. Keys unloaded on a forehand bullet at Bondar, who had come forward to the net. The ball rocketed past her, unreturnable. As it landed, Keys unleashed a thunderous roar, the kind of visceral release that only comes when a player has dragged herself back from the edge.
A rare escape on a familiar stage
This was no routine escape. It marked the first time Keys has ever won a match at the US Open after saving a match point. It’s also the first time she has pulled off that kind of escape in a WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz match since Cincinnati last year, when she turned around a 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (1) win over Eva Lys.
Different city, different opponent. Same stubborn refusal to let a match go.
On a noisy Court 17 night, with the momentum swinging wildly and the tension thick, Madison Keys trusted her forehand, trusted the fight, and kept her US Open alive.
