On This Day: Keys Wins WTA Debut, 2009

Due to the ongoing global health crisis surrounding COVID-19, professional tennis has announced a suspension of the 2020 competitive season until July. During this time, USTA.com is opening up our archives and taking a look back at memorable, monumental and notable moments in the history of American professional tennis that took place "on this day." 

Eleven years ago today, future Top-10 star and US Open finalist Madison Keys earned the first victory of her professional career in historic fashion. 

Shortly after turning professional on her 14th birthday in February, Keys made her WTA main-draw debut as a wild card at the the MPS Group Championships in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. A WTA tour stop since 1980, the storied green-clay event had seen a decorated rolodex of champions, including Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Venus Williams and Lindsay Davenport, in its 30-year history.

With Keys a pupil at the Evert Tennis Academy (ETA) in Boca Raton, the promising talent was given a wild card into the event's main draw in its first year in Ponte Vedra—having moved there after spending its entire tenure on Amelia Island—and ETA Executive Director John Evert told the local media that Keys was "on the radar" even before the buzz that came with her WTA debut.

Thanks to the wild card, Keys was set to contest just her second professional tournament at any level, having lost her first match to then-world No. 141 Ekaterina Bychkova at the $25,000 ITF event in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., in March from a set up, just two weeks after her 14th birthday. In Ponte Vedra, Keys was drawn against world No. 81 Alla Kudryavtseva of Russia, best known for a stunning victory over No. 3 seed Maria Sharapova en route to a fourth-round showing at Wimbledon just eight months earlier.

Already boasting the jaw-dropping power both on serve and off the ground that she's become known for, the teenaged American fell behind 5-2 in the first set before winning five games in a row against her first-ever Top-100 opponent. From 4-1 up in the second set, and showing off a serve that was already clocking in at 100 mph, Keys ultimately held off a late surge from Kudryavtseva to score her first professional victory, 7-5, 6-4. 

After the match, the then-eighth grader already showed maturity beyond her years: “It doesn’t really matter what the other person is doing,” Keys told The Florida Times-Union. "I just have to focus on what I’m doing.”

After Keys' victory, Evert added: “I think she proved today that she can compete with girls at this level.”

Keys was ultimately beaten in the second round, giving a good accounting of herself in a 6-3, 6-2 defeat to top seed and then-world No. 9 Nadia Petrova. But at the age of 14 years, 48 days, the Rock Island, Ill., native became the seventh-youngest player ever to win a WTA main-draw match, and the youngest since Martina Hingis in 1994.

In the 11 years since her first professional win, Keys scored several other 'youngest to' milestones before becoming an elite force. As a wild card in the 2011 US Open, Keys beat Jill Craybas in her Grand Slam main-draw debut to become the youngest player to win a match at the Open since 2005, and she skyrocketed over 100 places in the rankings in 2013 to end that season ranked No. 37 at age 18.

Among all that she's achieved since that fateful Monday in Ponte Vedra, Keys has finished the last seven seasons ranked inside the WTA Top 50, reaching the semifinals of the 2015 Australian Open while still a teenager, a career-high ranking of world No. 7 in 2016, and the final of the US Open in 2017. 

Photo: Madison Keys takes a selfie with a fan after her match against Lin Zhu at the 2019 US Open. Credit: Fernando Colon/USTA.