Madison Keys, the 2025 Australian Open champion, described a shift in how she approaches clay after advancing to the semifinals of the Credit One Charleston Open following a quarterfinal victory over Belinda Bencic. The comment came at the end of her press conference and reflected a broader change in her attitude toward the surface.

Q. I was curious how you would assess how your relationship with clay courts have evolved over the years because obviously you’ve had some really great results on clay, but I would imagine you probably still prefer hard and grass and how that mentality takes you into the season each year?

MADISON KEYS: I have grown to not dislike clay. I think when I first started, it kind of always felt like it was slower. I think at the start of my career I kind of would try to change who I was as a tennis player. And I felt like I lost my own tennis identity throughout the clay swing, and then you get back on grass and you just kind of feel like everything is front-foot tennis.

So, I think over the years I’ve stopped trying to make these drastic changes to how I play tennis. It’s just the smaller tweaks and how can you actually use the court to help your game. And, honestly, I think I almost like clay better than grass. Right? Crazy, I know!

Keys made clear that she still favors hard courts overall, saying she would “still take a hard-court swing over any other time in the season,” but that the higher bounce and different rhythms of clay have helped her keep more of her natural game. She also observed that grass has changed: “Queen’s Club is still pretty fast,” she told me before filming a video for the tournament’s social media page, and she noted that Wimbledon’s grass has gotten slower over the years.

The remarks invite comparison with other players who have translated clay comfort into success on other surfaces; the draft referenced four-time Roland Garros winner Iga Swiatek’s run to the 2025 Wimbledon title as one example of that crossover. For Keys, the Charleston week appears to be another step in a career-long process of refining how surface adjustments fit her style.

Jessica Pegula entered the week defending her Credit One Charleston Open crown and emerged unbeaten in matches that tested her patience. The top seed has needed late rallies in three straight wins to advance to a fourth straight Charleston semifinal, repeatedly coming back from 0-2 down in the final set.

“It’s the only thing that keeps can me alive,” the top seed smiled after rallying to defeat Diana Shnaider on Friday. Pegula’s path to the semis included three-set victories over Yulia Putintseva, Elisabetta Cocciaretto and No. 7-seeded Diana Shnaider, and she closed the quarterfinal by winning the final six games against Shnaider to seal the win.

The unusually bumpy transition to clay has produced rare flashes of visible frustration from Pegula, directed at coaches Mark Knowles and Mark Merklein. “Sometimes I’m talking to them,” Pegula admitted in her post-match press conference. “It’s hard to hear sometimes with the crowd, sometimes I’m kind of just saying things that they probably don’t hear, but then I’m talking to myself at the same time.

“I was a little frustrated at the end of the first set. Like my coach kind of told me, like, ‘Your attitude hasn’t been great,’ and I got kind of annoyed, and I was like, ‘Well, what do you expect it to be? Like I’ve been competing pretty well this week.’ And then I start rambling on to myself, like, ‘Are you fricking kidding me? Like, seriously? I think it’s been fine.’ Like it was kind of not great obviously once I lost the first set. Yeah, it’s hard.

“I feel like, for me, someone who doesn’t show a ton of emotion, there are times where I do feel like I have to let it out, and he claims he kind of did it on purpose. I don’t really know if that’s true, but he was like, ‘I did kind of want you to just like almost get mad at me a little bit just to, like, stop over-thinking all the other things that were happening in the match.’”

Pegula will face either Iva Jovic or Anna Kalinskaya in the semifinal. “She’s been playing great tennis,” Pegula said of Jovic. “Super tough competitor, very focused. Works really hard, doesn’t have like a ton of holes in her game. I feel like it’s an overall really solid player and I think has been playing at a really high level this whole year. And, yeah, it’ll be tricky playing her on clay. It’s always different than playing her on a pretty fast hard court in Dubai. So, we’ll see how that kind of varies.”

The world No. 5 has now reached at least the quarterfinals in 10 straight tournaments dating back to last year’s US Open. Pegula remained pragmatic about the clay swing and optimistic that the work in Charleston will pay off in Europe. “I do think that this week is something that I can really build off of,” she told me on Friday. “There’s a lot of things that I feel like I can get better at that I’m not doing that well right now, that I feel have a lot to do with the surface change, just my footing, my footwork, like decision making, just, you know, a lot of different things. I feel like it does kind of act as a baseline for like, ‘Okay, what can we build off this week?’ No matter what happens, whether I won or lost today or yesterday or tomorrow, it’s going to be the same.

I mean, my coach, we have this thing where we say it’s just practice anyway. And so, we kind of just say everything is practice, even though it’s not. But it is kind of true. I mean, today I was thinking of what I need to do better from yesterday, like what are things I need to work on the clay. Jessica Pegula

Madison Keys acknowledged during her postmatch media session that reality television is one of her favorite press conference topics. Fresh from a straight-sets victory over Donna Vekic in the Credit One Charleston Open first round, the 2025 Australian Open champion and admitted Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fan paused to update the room on local Charleston personalities and the ongoing Summer House controversy.

“Oh my gosh,” Keys exclaimed when asked about two reality vehicles set right here in Charleston, Southern Charm and Southern Hospitality. “I did meet Venita [Aspen] and her mom the other day,” she told me after a straight-sets win over Donna Vekic. “Her mom is like the biggest tennis fan ever, and she’s so sweet, and it was so nice. And I met Salley [Carson], too. I asked her about her chickens, because someone told me that.

“I’ve been like very obsessed with the other drama that’s happening,” Keys added with a knowing smile.

The other drama she referenced concerns Summer House and the reported cheating scandal involving Amanda Batula, West Wilson, and Ciara Miller. Batula, who recently announced her separation from husband and co-star Kyle Cooke, revealed in a statement that she had begun a romantic entanglement with Wilson, who was previously linked to Miller.

“Crazy! Crazy!” Keys said as she and I attempted to loop the room into this decidedly niche drama. “Guys, it’s like there’s so many things happening right now. And none of them are great. But to be honest, at least we have something to just bond together over.” The No. 5 seed made her position clear on the developing story: she was Team Ciara.

“Didn’t you see that West is maybe cheating on [Batula]?” she asked me, as we had ostensibly become the only two people in the room. “There’s rumors of that now! Yes! Potentially [cheating] with Ciara! No, it’s crazy, and a joint statement was like the craziest PR move I’ve ever seen in my entire life!”

Keys then shifted back to lighter fare, describing an April Fool’s prank she and colleagues pulled on her agent with help from tournament director Bob Moran. “We texted her in like a group chat, and we’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, did you hear what happened with the podcast and everything?’” recalled Keys, referring to The Player’s Box podcast. “And then Bob also texted her, like, ‘Hey, we need to talk,’ and then none of us responded. She did figure it out. She said she was freaking out for like 20 minutes and then saw the date and just texted all of us that she hates us. It was very funny.”