Madison Keys, who has won her first match since October, says that she is happy to be back and pain-free from a wrist injury that had bothered her since the 2015 US Open.
“[I] kind of just managed it for a while,” said Keys, who is making her return at Indian Wells. “It was after Wimbledon I found out it's not going to go away and that I was going to need surgery to fix it. So the original plan was, 'Okay, after US Open, get it done, be ready for Australian Open.' And then after US Open, there was the race to Singapore. There is no way you're going to get me off of a tennis court right now. Then it was, okay, we're going to do everything we can to get to Singapore. And then, if you don't make Singapore, we'll call it there. If you do, which I did, I got home, I had surgery November 2nd.”
The No. 9 Keys didn’t win any huge tournaments in 2016, but the 22-year-old did reach the finals at Montreal and Rome. She said, "If anything, it made me play my game better.
"Looking more for forehands, doing what I could, maybe not going for the winner down the line from 16 feet behind the baseline, playing a lot smarter. More than anything, I think it made me a lot more mentally tougher."
She said that she is completely healthy, but her body is still at 80 percent.
Keys said that she really missed playing on court. “I mean, walking out there today, I almost started crying,” she said. “It's just so great to be back. We do get to do what we love. I think that's really special, and I think sometimes we get really caught up in the winning and the losing and rankings. And at the end of the day, we get to play a sport that we love for our jobs.”
