Madison Keys and Jessica Pegula brought a playful edge to the buildup for their Australian Open fourth-round meeting, turning a friendly rivalry into a debated bet that has become a topic of the players’ press duties.

The two friends and co-hosts of The Player’s Box podcast have been negotiating a forfeit for the loser. “She said she wants to have, like, whoever loses, like, the other person can come up with something,” Keys said. “She wants to make me eat her disgusting apple pie with cheese on top of it if I lose, which I said I refuse, so she’s going to have to think of something else.”

The mention of cheddar-topped apple pie animated the room after Keys advanced to the second week with a win over former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova. “Yeah, it’s gross,” Keys said. She recounted a Thanksgiving podcast exchange: “We were doing this Thanksgiving podcast. We were talking about what’s your favorite foods, your favorite desserts, whatever.

“Jess was like, ‘Yeah, it so good. You take apple pie. You put a piece of cheddar cheese on top of it, and then you, cheddar, yellow cheddar’—exactly!—’Then you microwave it and then eat it.’

“She tried to make it sound like it was the most normal thing ever, and we were all just disgusted. She tried to double down and said, ‘No, it’s amazing.’”

Keys declined to propose a counterpunishment for Pegula, noting she has beaten Pegula in their last two meetings, and continued to tease her rival. “I definitely made it worse in my head, because I was envisioning, like, a Kraft Singles gross, square piece of cheese. She’s like, ‘No, you use a good piece of cheddar.’ Doesn’t make it better!”

Pegula confirmed plans to record an episode of The Player’s Box before their match and joked about adding a live element with neutral co-host Desirae Krawczyk: “She can go live on the pod during our singles match,” joked Pegula. “Maybe it will help the numbers on the pod. If we film tomorrow, we can kind of, yeah, market that it was, like, us recording before we had to play each other.”

The players, who launched the podcast last summer with Krawczyk and Jennifer Brady and welcomed Coco Gauff as an early guest, said they plan to grow the show. Keys made clear she will keep the competition on court serious despite the off-court banter.

Madison Keys closed a long chapter last year when she won the Australian Open, ending a decade of chasing a Grand Slam singles title. In the months since, fans and fellow players have asked how the victory has changed her life. “It’s funny, everyone keeps asking me that,” Keys told reporters a few days ago, before launching her campaign to defend the title. “It hasn’t changed that much, other than I have a really cool trophy at home.

“I also have a lot of people that come up to tell me that my winning made them cry. It’s just really been cool as an athlete to have had that impact [because] I’ve always tried to be very open and honest with everything that goes on in the sport. I kind of do my part of humanizing this part of the sport.”

Now 30 and ranked No. 9, Keys has evolved from an early prodigy into a Grand Slam champion known for a thunderous forehand and a commitment to well-being. She remains averse to celebrity culture and has focused much of her energy off court on the anti-bullying foundation she started in 2020, Kindness Wins.

Keys advanced to the third round of the Australian Open with a 6-1, 7-5 victory over compatriot Ashlyn Krueger and is set to face Karolina Pliskova. “I started really well,” Keys said in her post-match interview. “Obviously. I was expecting Ashleigh to raise her level, which she did. I was just really happy that I was able to stay gritty and stay in that second set and be able to get out of it with a straight-sets win.”

She has been an outspoken advocate for mental-health support in the sport. “It’s been incredibly helpful to me,” she said in a news conference. “I’ve tried sports psychologists in the past, but for me just everything being so focused on just the sport and just tennis was not as helpful as I needed it to be.

I think really going to someone and kind of looking at my overall life, and kind of how that was influencing how I felt on the court, probably made the biggest difference.

Marriage to fellow pro Bjorn Fratangelo in November of 2024 has also helped bring balance. “My husband has threatened that if I try to renovate any more parts of our house, I will be thrown out. I think it’s been 18 months of construction at our house. He’s asked me to at least take a year break, which I feel is fair.” She called traveling with her husband instead of solo “absolutely amazing.”

On player welfare she said, “I am more concerned about wanting these Slams to put it (money) towards player welfare [than just prize money],” she said in Melbourne.“I think the tours obviously do that, (with) our healthcare, pension and all that. I mean, at the end of the day, I think we’re all partners, and we all need each other.”

Reflecting on last year, Keys recalled keeping her focus point by point. “I kind of kept telling myself, ‘Just try to get the next point,’” Keys said after saving match point against Swiatek at the Australian Open. She added, “You just kind of have moments in your career where things just are going right. And that’s kind of how it felt for a couple of weeks,” she said. “It’s easy to look back and kind of romanticize it. I played unbelievable tennis, but everyone likes to remind me that I lost more games than anyone in history while winning a Grand Slam.” She wryly added, “So obviously there was some room for improvement there.”

Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko is navigating a wave of firsts at this year’s Australian Open while adding a major endorsement to her resume. She has reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time and will face World No. 1 and two-time tournament champion Aryna Sabalenka, a likely meeting on Rod Laver Arena that would also be a first for Mboko.

The 2025 WTA Newcomer of the Year is building on last summer’s breakthrough, when she made a run to a WTA 1000 title on home soil. Off the court she has expanded her profile as well: earlier this week Mboko announced a partnership with luxury watch brand Rolex and acknowledged the significance of the deal on social media. “Proud to stand among the legends and carry the legacy forward,” she wrote.

Mboko’s agreement places her among a select group of players associated with the brand, a club that currently includes Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, Coco Gauff, and Iga Swiatek. Despite the attention, she has emphasized staying grounded and focused on tennis.

“It’s a great thing to be a part of. It’s a family,” she said after defeating Clara Tauson in a dramatic third-round match on Friday. “Being a part of something so big, associated with something like that … I don’t really put more pressure on myself just because something comes. I’m still the same person.

“I just like to focus on things on the court, you know? It’s what you do on court that kind of gets you stuff off the court. So as long as I’m invested in what I’m doing on the court, invested in matches and training, then everything else comes after.”

As Mboko prepares for what would be her first match against a top-ranked player on one of the sport’s biggest stages, she appears intent on letting performance drive opportunity, keeping the immediate priority on matches and preparation.