NEW YORK — Madison Keys walked to her chair on Court 17 looking, for all the world, like a player on her way out of the US Open.
Down 5-2 in the third set. Five match points faced. The crowd anxious, then resigned, then restless.
She left the court an hour later roaring at the sky, having staged the comeback of the tournament so far.
Keys, the No. 22 seed, somehow clawed past Anna Bondar 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (5) in a wild, nerve-jangling contest that turned Court 17 into a pressure cooker and reminded everyone why her forehand remains one of the most devastating shots in the sport.
From the brink at 2-5
Bondar, ranked No. 73 in the PIF WTA Rankings, had done the hard work. She had dragged Keys into long, grinding rallies, kept her second serve under attack and, at 5-2 in the decider, stood two points from the biggest win of her season.
Then the nerves arrived.
Serving at 5-2, Bondar earned her first match point — and double-faulted. On her second match point, another double fault. Keys, feeding off a raucous New York crowd desperate for a fightback, broke to 5-3 and clung to the lifeline.
Her own service game almost snapped it.
Keys quickly trailed 15-40, handing Bondar three more looks at the finish line. Each time, Keys stepped in and swung. Two forehand winners that clipped the line dragged the game back to deuce. A third forehand winner erased a fifth match point. She held for 5-4, the noise rising with every strike.
Suddenly, it was Bondar who looked tight. Keys broke again, then coolly held for 6-5. From 2-5 down, she had won four straight games. Court 17 shook. Bondar steadied herself just enough to hold and force the deciding 10-point tiebreak.
The match had already been turned inside out. The tiebreak twisted it once more.
Forehand fury in the breaker
Bondar, refusing to wilt, jumped ahead 5-3 in the breaker and again stood on the edge of a signature win. Keys’ momentum seemed to have stalled.
Then her forehand took over the night.
Keys unloaded on four consecutive forehand winners, ripping the ball into corners, through the court, past a scrambling Bondar. In a blink, 3-5 became 7-5. Bondar never recovered.
Keys closed with three more points, sealing the 10-5 tiebreak and the match with one last forehand bullet that Bondar, stranded at the net, could only flail at. The ball flashed by, the match was over, and Keys exploded — a primal, thunderous release that matched the chaos of the previous three hours.
This was no routine escape. It was history of a sort.
A rare kind of escape
For the first time in her career, Keys has won a match at the US Open after saving match points. It’s also the first time she has pulled off such an 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) battle against Eva Lys.
Different city. Different opponent. Same defiance.
On a packed side court in New York, with the night crowd roaring and the match slipping away, Keys trusted the one thing that has always defined her game: that fearless, flattening forehand.
It kept her in the tournament. Now the question is how far it can carry her.
