2025 Australian Open women's final preview: Madison Keys vs. Aryna Sabalenka

For anyone hoping to see the long-awaited first Grand Slam final between the WTA’s No. 1 and 2, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, the 2025 Australian Open final may seem like a letdown. Especially since Swiatek was one point from making it happen in her semifinal with Madison Keys.

But what Keys vs. Sabalenka lacks in historic significance, it could make up for in sheer ball-striking bravado. These two are among the biggest hitters and spin-creators the women’s game has ever seen. Keys is 5-foot-1, Sabalenka is 6-foot, they can both power the ball flat and make it dive with topspin with their serves and forehands.

In fact, their games are similar enough that, as Sabalenka has ascended in the rankings, the 29-year-old Keys has started taking cues from the younger champion.

“The one thing I really wanted to try to be better at was not playing more passive in big points and really, honestly, just trying to emulate the way she trusts her game and the way she goes after it,” Keys says of Sabalenka.

That new attitude, along with a new racquet and a new serve, have helped Keys win 11 straight matches, including perhaps the biggest of her career, over Swiatek, 10-8 in a final-set tiebreak.

Read more: Madison Keys—with a new racquet, serve and attitude—is into her first Australian Open final

Can it get her one more, and her first major title? After beating No. 2, Keys will, fittingly, have to go through No. 1 to do it. She’s 1-4 against Sabalenka, and one of those defeats may have been the most painful of her pro life. In the US Open semifinals two years ago, Keys led 6-0, 5-3, and served for the match, before losing 7-6 in the third.

It was a loss that Keys said took a long time to get over. But she can also look back and realize (a) that she was very close to winning, and (b) that she just came out on the upside of a similar semifinal with Swiatek.

Keys also says that she can learn from her only other major final, which ended in a disastrously one-sided defeat to Sloane Stephens at the 2017 US Open.

“I've obviously thought of that match endlessly for the past eight years,” Keys laughed.

“I think during that match, I was so consumed with being nervous and the moment and the opportunity and all of that, that I never really gave myself a chance to actually play.”

This time, she knows she’ll be nervous, and she’s going to try to live with it.

“I’m probably going to be uncomfortable 99% of the time that I’m on the court, and that’s OK, and I can still also play tennis through that,” Keys says.

Keys might want to remind herself that, while Sabalenka has won her last two Slam finals, she has suffered plenty of big-match breakdowns of her own in the past. During this tournament, her nerves have reappeared when she has faced a player who can take control of the rallies from her. Clara Tauson and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova both had success slugging with Sabalenka, and Keys has the game to do that as well.

I’m probably going to be uncomfortable 99% of the time that I’m on the court, and that’s OK, and I can still also play tennis through that." Madison Keys

Sabalenka also remembers their US Open semi. She remembers getting overpowered early, and she remembers how she turned it around.

“It felt like she was just going for her shots, and everything was going in. She was just crushing it,” Sabalenka says. “I think at some moments she was just, like, start questioning herself. I saw that and I felt like, OK, now is the moment to make sure that you put as many balls back as you can. I think that was the crucial moment.”

Who will make more first serves? Who will take the other’s time away in the rallies? Who will play to her favorite patterns? Who will hit their ground-stroke targets in the corners more often? Who will deal with the nerves that come when a Grand Slam finish line appears over the horizon? It feels like all of these aspects of this match are up for grabs.

There’s a player of destiny aspect to Keys right now, and I’ve always thought she would win at least one major. But Sabalenka hits with a little more margin and control, and she has crossed this finish line before. Winner: Sabalenka