MELBOURNE, Australia — There was a moment Monday afternoon, during Madison Keys’ fourth-round match against No. 6 seed Elena Rybakina, when her coach, Bjorn Fratangelo, realized that this wasn’t the time for happy talk.
Keys, the No. 19 seed and a two-time semifinalist at Melbourne Park, had won the first set. But Rybakina, who like Keys is a precise winner machine when she is playing the tennis she wants to play, had taken the second by seizing the initiative and playing on her front foot. Halfway to the finish, Keys had become a passive counterpuncher.
On the break between the second and third set, Keys wandered close enough to the courtside box for a chat and found her coach trying to light a fire under her.
“If you lose this match playing the way you play, we go home and that’s it, 30 hours we’re home,” he said. “You lose this match how you’ve lost the second set? You’re gonna be a little bit bummed about it for a while.”
Fratangelo, a 31-year-old retired pro, should know. He’s not just her coach. He’s also her husband. In the middle of 2023, he was just her fiancé, before assuming a role that he took on reluctantly and temporarily — or so he thought.
He swore it wouldn’t last. He didn’t like it much, all that standing behind her on the practice court and trying to gently suggest how she should do something she’d been doing pretty much all her life. It felt like a minefield, and he was trying to nurse his own career back to life.
Plus he was trying to nurse himself and his own career back to life. Fratangelo won the French Open junior title in 2011, beating Dominic Thiem in the final; he had peaked at No. 99 in the world rankings in 2016. But then Keys won Eastbourne, and she was in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon with a healthy lead over Jasmine Paolini before an injury forced her to retire. She came back and made the U.S. Open semifinals, ending the season on the edge of the top 10 while Fratangelo’s comeback sputtered.
That’s how he found himself in those new black seats on the edge of Margaret Court Arena for her fourth-round match against Rybakina. He was back, this time on Rod Laver Arena, as Keys toppled Elina Svitolina Thursday to make the semifinals for a third time. She will play Iga Swiatek, the No. 2 seed, Thursday night
Keys won the matches, of course, not him. There is uncomfortable tendency in tennis to give male coaching teams the credit for their player’s success. Fratangelo is aware.
“What I’ve tried to instill in her is that winning and losing is irrelevant,” he said, but “how you lose and how you win matters.
“Don’t lose being passive because it’s not who you are. Let a counterpuncher lose being passive because that’s what they do. You lose putting your foot on the gas pedal and that’s OK. It’s going to happen.” Keys’ superpower is hitting one of the biggest balls in the sport, especially when her opponent thinks she is in a position where she can’t do that.
Madison Keys and Bjorn Fratangelo celebrate her Eastbourne title in 2024. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)
Losing stinks, but losing on the opponent’s terms stinks more. Fratangelo believes that there is a way to win if you embrace the idea that you will lose the way you want to lose.
In an interview Wednesday after her win over Svitolina, Keys said other coaches and people around her had used some of the same words as Fratangelo. But then she would lose the way she wanted to lose, and the support didn’t feel all that unconditional anymore.
“The really great thing about Bjorn is that when he says that he absolutely means that,” she said.
“OK, you went out, you tried to execute the game plan and you missed a few too many. It’s fine. We go back, we work on it, and it is what it is.
He truly does not care if I win or lose. Obviously he wants me to win, but it’s really: ‘how did you play? Have you been implementing the things that we’ve been working on?’”
Both Keys and Fratangelo said that getting to this comfort zone took some doing. For years while they dated, their roles in each other’s tennis lives were nothing more than cheerleading. They didn’t critique each other’s games over dinner.
In the early spring of 2023, Keys found herself without a coach. She spent the entire clay-court season on her own, and after the French Open she asked Fratangelo for help.
OK, but just for a bit, he said.
They did two weeks together. It didn’t feel right — to him.
She asked him to come to England and coach her through the grass court season. Keys knew the lines might get a little blurry at times, but they would figure it out.
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He said no. Too weird. Too complicated
Fratangelo’s own coach told him that was the wrong answer. He changed his mind, then the winning started. It took some getting used to. Keys said he just wanted to be the cheerleader and the supporter, rather than the advisor.
“It got to the point where I was like, ‘I’m asking you for help,’” she said. “If you see something you have to tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
Like nearly every human relationship, its success depends on good communication. Sometimes, after a match or a practice, he wants to talk about something he saw and she’s not ready to hear it. She tells him she needs an hour. Sometimes it’s urgent. He’s got to get it out. He tells her he needs 10 minutes.
Nearing 30, Keys is far removed from the prodigy who started winning WTA Tour matches when she was 14. She made her first Australian Open semifinal 10 years ago. She made the U.S. Open final in 2017. Then injuries and the weight of the impossible expectations that came with being a teen star when the sport was hunting for its next Serena Williams, took their toll. Her hunt for the first Grand Slam title that had once seemed easy to find got frustrating. Tennis stopped being much fun.
Keys said Wednesday that she is now starting to appreciate her career, even if that title remains elusive.
“I’ve really left everything out there,” she said.
This is Madison Keys’ third Australian Open semifinal. (Mark Avelino / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Now she’s got some good company out there with her, someone to order takeout with Wednesday night ahead of her semifinal date with Swiatek, the tournament’s best player so far.
“The match that I have tomorrow is going to be really difficult, so I think it’ll almost be a little bit easier to not get ahead of myself,” she said.
She’s not sure how long Fratangelo will last on the road with her full-time. He always hated the endless travel of the tennis life, though he said Monday that he’s loved the past 18 months because it’s the first time in their relationship they have been able to be together non-stop. Before they were on separate tours and schedules, spending much of the year in different time zones.
Still, he’s a homebody. They just finished renovating their Orlando home. He likes to cook. They have a nice coffee station there. They both love to be boring and sit around the house.
Keys has tennis stuff to do at the moment though, and she wants his help doing it. She told him if he found something else he was really passionate about she would understand. There was a “but” attached to that, though.
“Unless you’re gung ho about it,” she told him. “I would prefer that I see you and we actually spend time together. Also, I’m playing really well so ideally I would have you around.”
For now, those corner seats on the Australian Open’s show courts seem like a pretty good spot.
(Top photo: Mike Freyn / Imagn)
