M. KEYS/J. Pegula
6-3, 4-6, 6-1
THE MODERATOR: Madison, congratulations on your second title here in Adelaide, can you just give us your thoughts on the match and your performance today.
MADISON KEYS: Really happy with the win today. I think I played really well in the first set and the third set, and that's kind of really all that it needed to be. Jess is such a tough opponent, and I feel like you have to be so on, and I just kind of knew coming into today that I was really going to have to dot all of my I's and cross all of my T's in order to beat her.
THE MODERATOR: Questions?
Q. Can you just take us through the medical timeout, was there any issue there that you've got ongoing, or did you get rid of it?
MADISON KEYS: No, it was just kind of one of those things that kind of appeared, and luckily, you know, with the magic of tape, things felt a little bit better, and I was able to get through the match. I think once the kind of immediate kind of panic of, Oh no, something is happening, I think I finally relaxed and was able to refocus on the match.
I think in some ways it just made me kind of go for it a little bit more, and go after things a little bit quicker, which luckily they were going in, so I think in some ways it, you know, kind of helped me be a little bit more aggressive.
Q. Just following on from that, I think there was 40 winners to 10, that was obviously a plan of yours to be as aggressive as possible through that, was it?
MADISON KEYS: Yeah, I don't, when you play Jess you don't really want to give her a lot of balls to get a lot of rhythm, because then all of a sudden you're running and she's just zinging things by you. I think it's one of those matches where you have to try to take the initiative as soon as you get it because the longer the point goes, and the more corner to corner that you start getting, that's when Jess becomes her best.
Q. Just on that, I guess, can you speak to exactly how well you played, especially in that third set, do you feel it's maybe some of the best tennis you've produced as of late?
MADISON KEYS: I think I've been playing really well this season so far. There was definitely some things that we worked on, we've tweaked a few things in my game, and it was really important going into this season to really take all of the things that we were working on in practice and actually implementing them in the matches.
I feel like there was a lot to build on after last year, I felt like I was playing some pretty good tennis, and just felt like I didn't have the consistency that I wanted because I unfortunately had a few longer breaks due to injury. So, it was really just kind of accumulation of kind of taking all of the work that we did last year and all of that, and then having a really good off-season and just going for it.
Q. It's pretty hard to say now, obviously, but last time you won here you made the semis in the Aussie Open, are you feeling confident you can go on another pretty big run?
MADISON KEYS: I think that I haven't quite gotten my brain on to Melbourne yet (laughing), I'm still pretty firmly in Adelaide right now. I mean, I think when I'm playing good tennis a lot of really good things can happen, and it's just putting myself out there and continuing to give myself the opportunity to play good tennis, and a lot of times good things follow. Luckily, Ash Barty is not here to embarrass me anymore, so we have that going for me (laughing).
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports